


You Don't Feel Strong Enough to Stand (Reach Out a Hand)

by GinnyBloomPotter



Category: Leverage
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Eliot Spencer Whump, Eliot Spencer-centric, Eliot is actually a decent patient, Fever, Fever Dreams, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grumpy Eliot Spencer, Hurt/Comfort, Leverage OT3, Light Angst, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, OT3, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Probably Spoilers, Protective Eliot Spencer, Protective Team, Reluctant Cuddling, Sick Character, Sick Eliot Spencer, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24871069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinnyBloomPotter/pseuds/GinnyBloomPotter
Summary: Eliot may not be hiding the fact that he's sick, but that doesn't mean he wants the team to see him weak. Unfortunately, he might not have much of a choice.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Eliot Spencer & Team Leverage, Nathan Ford & Eliot Spencer, Sophie Devereaux & Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford
Comments: 195
Kudos: 351





	1. Are You Okay? (I Feel Fine)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the obligatory "I just finished Leverage and am appalled at the lack of Eliot comfort we get" fic. Basically, I have a lot of feelings about Eliot, about the OT3, and about Leverage in general. Was I expecting this to be the next story I wrote? No. In fact, I'd already started a Magicians/Umbrella Academy crossover. But then I watched the whole show in two weeks and... this happened. 
> 
> This takes place somewhere vaguely in Season 5, so Parker and Hardison are together, as are Nate and Sophie. As to any other timeline details, I really don't know.
> 
> Story Title is based off of lyrics from "You Will Be Found" from Dear Evan Hansen.
> 
> Chapter Title is from "I'm Not Alright" by Shinedown.

Eliot’s chest burned. His throat too. Like he’d been inhaling knives and smoke. Which he  _ hadn’t  _ been _.  _ Not since the last time he’d been in Nigeria, anyway, which was too long ago to be doing anything to him  _ now.  _

The burn started a tickle in the back of his throat, and he closed his eyes and breathed deep. It wouldn’t do to cough now, not when it was so pivotal to keep quiet. A cough would give away his location. 

Not that he could remember what he was supposed to be hiding from in the first place. 

Wait,  _ was  _ he even hiding? 

It was so dark that he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. It was hot, and he was lying on his stomach on top of a soft surface, and there was a fairly even pressure pressing over the contours of his body.

It was with a jerk that he realized he was in a bed, and then he slowly remembered the other details.

A hotel. That’s where they were.  _ They,  _ because it was him and Nate and Sophie and Parker and Hardison and they were on a job. Some… rich guy? It must have been a rich guy; they didn’t run cons on anyone else. But who…?

The blanket was ripped off of him, and his instinct was to flail out and strike whoever it was that disturbed him. He stopped himself just before his foot made contact with Hardison’s groin. 

“Woah! It’s just me! Don’t do that, man!” 

Eliot pushed himself up as Hardison grumbled about being attacked. He glared.

“I don’t know what you expected, waking me up like that,” he grumbled. “You’re lucky I stopped when I realized it was you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Listen bro. Nate needs you to…”

Eliot lost track of what the other man was saying as he stood up because of the way his vision swam when he got upright. He figured it didn’t quite matter enough to ask him to repeat himself, and he instead pushed his way past Hardison to get into the bathroom. 

He could hear Hardison yelling protests at him, shouting about how rude it was for him to refuse to listen, but he blocked it out in favor of stripping and climbing into the shower. He was sticky with sweat from sleeping so completely under the covers, and his hair, at least, needed a wash to look even halfway presentable. 

He usually wasn’t so particular about cold or hot water in the shower, but the burning in his chest had developed into a sort of heavy ache, and he thought steam might do it some good, and so he turned it on hot and silently hoped it would help.

It  _ was  _ a rich guy, he recalled as he ran the hotel soap bar over his arm. A rich guy who was the CEO of a pharmaceutical company and was using company funds to fuel his gambling addiction, laying off more and more innocent staff, and hiring thieves to steal his own drugs while they were on route to the hospital, collecting on cargo insurance, and then turning around and selling the drugs on the black market. 

Sophie had been sent out to grift him the day before, gaining his trust and inviting him out of the office. Today, Parker was using the absence of the boss to crack the safe in his office for records of the misdeeds. All in all, not an all too complicated job. Barring, of course, the way things were likely to go wrong, as they usually did. 

He rinsed quickly and stepped out of the shower. He didn’t have time to do anything with his hair, he figured, and so he tied it back while he dried off. The room was empty when he exited the bathroom, but he took no chances, keeping the towel tied around his waist while he retrieved a change of clothes and took it back into the steamy bathroom. Parker had a habit of barging into rooms unannounced, and he didn’t want to get caught with his pants around his ankles. 

He did a quick brush of his teeth after he dressed, and wiped a spot in the mirror clear so he could check on the development of the cut through his eyebrow he’d received a few days previous. It was doing fine, it seemed, but he sure didn’t look like he was. He looked pale and tired and almost ghostly gaunt, but when he steeled his eyes, he looked halfway back to normal, and he thought he could successfully get everyone else to ignore it if he glared hard enough. 

He inhaled as much of the leftover steam as he could manage before coughing a couple of times in hopes of relieving the tickle still present in the back of his throat. Finally, he let himself exit the bathroom and, key card safely tucked as deep in his jeans pocket as he could get it, made his way out of the room and across the hall to Nate and Sophie’s. 

They’d gotten three rooms for this job, booked by Hardison semi-legally. They were paid for, at least. He’d gotten lucky and got to room alone. Or, at least, he preferred to think of it as luck, and not as everyone else being coupled up and him being all on his own. If he was really honest-- No. Best not think about such things. (Don’t think about only two rooms, about sleeping between them, about tangling legs together and--)

Parker opened the door when he knocked, and gave a manic grin. 

“Hardison says the safe in the office is unbreakable. A Flatley AG-3500.”

Eliot smirked. “How many times have you broken into one?”

“Twice. Would’ve been more if Nate had let me near the one in Salem.”

“I get it!” yelled Hardison from inside the room. “I was wrong. It’s not unbreakable. Can we stop rubbing it in now?”

Parker let Eliot step into the room, and he dropped into the armchair in the corner. Parker moved his hand off of the arm of the chair and perched herself there. Hardison was by the table, on his computer, with Nate standing behind him, looking over his shoulder, and Sophie sat up against the headboard of the bed. 

“Eliot,” Nate addressed him. “Did Hardison tell you the plan?”

He shrugged. “He spoke. Can’t say I listened.”

“I told you, man!” Hardison complained. “He’s just rude! Won’t listen to anything I say! Is it really too much to ask for some goddamn respect round here--?”

“Hardison,” Nate barked out a warning, and obediently, the other man’s mouth snapped closed. Nate addressed Eliot once again. 

“We were wrong about his personal assistant going with him to lunch with Sophie,” he said. “According to the phone call she just got, Ms. Gailey is staying in the office to catch up on paperwork. We need you to distract her while Parker does her thing.” Nate’s gaze turned critical. Eliot could feel him cataloguing his paleness and lingering on the still healing cut in his eyebrow. “Think you’re up to it?”

Eliot scoffed instead of answering, rolling his eyes while he did. “Because it’s so difficult to flirt with a young, hot PA.”

With the way fatigue was starting to weigh on his limbs, it actually might have been difficult. But he was  _ fine. _ Definitely… 

A coughing fit ripped it’s way out of his throat before he could think about trying to resist it, and he buried his face in his elbow. He felt Parker give him a couple of thumps on the back, perhaps harder than was strictly necessary. 

Finally, he was able to stop and catch his breath. Parker had moved from hitting him to absentmindedly rubbing between his shoulder blades. Nate, Hardison, and Sophie were all staring at him. 

“You good, man?” Hardison asked. 

Eliot shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

“That wasn’t the question,” Sophie pointed out, and Eliot kind of wanted to slap her. 

“It’s just a cough. I can do what needs to be done. No problem.”

His words didn’t manage to stop Sophie from coming over and laying a hand on his forehead anyway, which he only just barely tolerated. 

“You feel a bit warm, Eliot.”

“If I start feeling worse, I’ll let you know. Until then…”

Both he and Sophie looked at Nate, and the mastermind gave him a searching look before nodding. “You know your limits, Eliot. Give the word and we’ll pull out. In the meantime, make yourself presentable. You’ve got some flirting to do.”

He resented the idea that he didn’t currently look presentable, but Parker was still rubbing his back, and he couldn’t get up the energy to be upset about much of anything while she was.

Sophie sent him one last concerned look, before flouncing off back to the bed and pulling out a bag, rifling through it and pulling out various makeup products he wasn’t bothering to try and catalogue. It wasn’t like he was unfamiliar with makeup products either, but the amount of tubes and compacts and vials that were emerging from the bag was both endlessly perplexing and ultimately concerning. 

Nate headed for the coffee bar to fix himself a cup, but Hardison didn’t move. He was still looking at him. Or, more accurately, him and Parker. He was just… watching. Like he wanted to stand and come over too, wanted to-- no, but that wouldn’t make sense. 

Still, the intensity in his eyes was unsettling, the concern palpable, and it made him unsure of whether he wanted to snap at him and make him stop or kiss the look off of his face. 

Eliot didn’t fully realize he was staring back at him until Sophie ended up in front of him and blocked his view. She was juggling what Eliot recognized as two different tubes of concealer, an eyebrow pencil, and a blush compact. 

“If you’re going to be doing this,” she was saying, “you’re at least going to look like a normal, healthy person with normal, full eyebrows.”

He raised one of said eyebrows at her, and then suddenly there was a sponge being pressed to the cut. 

Eliot submitted himself to Sophie’s ministrations, while Parker, now bored, stood and wandered over to where Hardison was sitting. He didn’t miss her hands on his back. 

He  _ didn’t. _

It didn’t take Sophie all that long to finish up, and once she did, Eliot removed himself from the room and went back to his, putting on a more professional appearing outfit and brushing out his hair to put into a more put together ponytail. 

He investigated Sophie’s work in the mirror. He wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to do it, but he no longer looked quite as tired, nor as beat up as he had when he’d surveyed himself after his shower. 

Before meeting up with the others once again, he sat on the edge of his bed, eyes closed, and tried to take stock of how he actually felt. 

The burning and tickling in his chest and throat weren’t going away. He was tired and run down and sore and overall… well, sick. But considering the states he’d pushed himself through before, he felt positively peachy. 

As long as it didn’t get any worse...


	2. I'll Guide You Through the Deep (Keep You Close to Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't let Parker find a safe full of money if you don't want her to take some of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Bows Graciously* Please enjoy my humble offerings. 
> 
> Chapter title is from "I'll Follow You" by Shinedown (Shinedown has a lot of really good chapter title lyrics.)

Ms. Gailey’s first name was Maura and she was a rather attractive young woman, which made Eliot’s job easier. Flirting with pretty women was like second nature to him. 

It was a good thing too, because a headache was starting to build up behind his eyes. 

He gave her his most charming smile and got to work. 

He’d been talking to her for a couple of minutes when he saw Parker drop down out of the vent and into the office. Through his earpiece, he heard her mutter, “I’m in.” 

He was careful not to look away from Maura, who was complaining about the mountain of work her boss had left on her desk, but he still saw Parker duck down behind the desk out of the corner of his eye. It was another couple of minutes before Parker had cracked the safe, even with the help of the Parker 2000. Luckily for him, Maura was content to continue to rant about the papers she had to fill out. He could get away with just grumbling his agreement and understanding and didn’t have to come up with anything new to say. 

“We have a problem,” Parker said in his ear. “The safe doesn’t have any files. Just money.”

Eliot wasn’t worried. Nate had considered that, surely?

It wasn’t Nate who spoke next though, but Hardison. 

“Ain’t no problem, mama. You remember that drive I gave you back at the hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“Stick it in the USB port of his computer. It’ll clone the entire hard drive and send it straight to me. If he’s got them on there, I’ll get them.”

There was silence for a minute as she complied. 

“Alright, Parker I’ve got it. You should be good to go.”

“No, wait,” Nate interjected. “See how much other snooping you can get in. I think there might be physical copies somewhere in that office.”

“Where am I supposed to look?” Parker asked. “Usually I’d just find a hidden panel for a safe but the safe is out here.”

“Maybe there’s a second safe.”

There was silence again, and out of the corner of his eye, Eliot saw Parker start moving around the office, pressing gloved hands against the walls and under the picture frames on the walls. 

“No, there’s no safe. But-- wait, there’s something wrong with this painting. It’s not… It’s not quite laying against the wall right. Like all the others are.”

Eliot watched Parker take the painting down, and then cursed himself, because he got too distracted and stopped looking at Maura, and she was starting to turn around to look for what was distracting him.

So he coughed. Loudly. Repeatedly. And then he found that he couldn’t stop. 

It worked, at least. Maura didn’t turn around, and raced around her desk instead, trying to find a way to support him as the coughs got deeper and hoarser until it felt like they were ripping their way out of his chest.

He stumbled back and away, trying to draw Maura away from the office window, and when he glanced through himself, he didn’t see Parker anywhere, and so he figured that she must have either ducked beneath the desk or escaped back through the vents. 

Well, at least the distraction  _ worked _ , even if he couldn’t find it in him to stop coughing. 

Finally, he managed to take a deep breath and exhale it without his vocal chords clamping shut. A paper cup full of cold water was pressed into his hand, and he forced himself to sip it slowly instead of gulping it down desperately the way he wanted to. 

He was sitting up against a glass wall, which surprised him a bit, given he couldn’t fully remember putting himself in that position. He could hear the team demanding answers from him over the coms. Maura was kneeling in front of him, one hand on his shoulder, looking worried and slightly startled. He gave her as reassuring a grin as he could manage. 

“Sorry about that,” he rasped, throat and chest feeling raw. “I think I inhaled my own saliva.”

Maura looked relieved, and seemed to believe him. “Oh, I do that all the time! Sucks, doesn’t it?”

He nodded and went to take another sip of water. The cup was drained when he was finished, and Maura took it from him. “Do you want some more?” she asked, and he nodded with a whispered “please.”

She stood carefully and smiled at him, then left to go down the hall to the water cooler. The second she was out of earshot, he spoke into the coms. 

“Parker, are you out?”

“I’m out; I’m in the vents. Didn’t have time to get the painting though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nate insisted. “We’ll get it later. That was too close a call. Are you alright, Eliot?”

He grunted an affirmative. “I’m sorry. She was starting to turn and I couldn’t think of how to distract her.”

“That didn’t sound like a distraction,” Hardison muttered. “It sounded like you were dying.”

“Still alive, still fine. I’m gonna get Maura out of the office so Parker can get back in and look at that painting.” 

He could see her coming down the hall towards him now, and he pushed himself to his feet as Nate asked him if he was sure. He didn’t answer.

He came up to meet her, and she held the cup out to him with a smile. He grinned back as he took it from her. 

“I think I could use a bit of fresh air. Care to join me?”

She glanced back at her desk, unsure, but then looked at his grin and nodded. She slipped a hand into his offered elbow, and he drew her away, towards the elevators, even as she explained that it couldn’t take too long.

“Now.” He disguised his whisper with another cough, this one remaining blessedly solitary. He could hear Parker drop back down into the office as the elevator doors closed.    


* * *

The files were hidden in the painting’s frame, between the canvas and the back, much like cash had been hidden behind Old Nate. Parker was grinning as she slapped them down onto Nate and Sophie’s hotel room table when they regrouped back there. She also took at least 3,000 dollars in twenty dollar bills out of increasingly improbable places. Eliot was almost impressed until he remembered it was Parker. Then, he was still kind of impressed, but mostly just trying not to stare as she pulled yet another wad of twenties from her cleavage. 

_ Don’t you dare,  _ he thought.  _ Don’t you dare think about Parker’s cleavage. Don’t. Just don’t. _

He focused instead on the pleased and in no way apologetic grin on the girl’s face. “Did you expect me to just forget about the money in the safe?” she asked Nate as he started to protest. “Don’t worry. I made sure not to take enough for him to notice. 

Hardison pulled another wad of bills, hundreds this time, from the waist of her pants. She seemed slightly surprised that they were there. “I forgot about those,” she shrugged. 

Nate finally seemed to give up, and took the files over to the armchair, where he sat as he opened the first one. Eliot, however, couldn’t help but grin and give a fist bump to a now beaming Parker. 

He was intent on leaving the coughing fit behind him, but Hardison didn’t seem to share the same sentiment. 

“You really okay, man?” he asked quietly, his face serious and drawn. “You don’t look great.”

Eliot glared. Hardison raised his hands in surrender. 

“Are you sure this was everything, Parker?” Nate asked as he pored over the files. 

“Of course I’m sure,” Parker insisted.

“Then we have a problem. All that’s in here are records of the bookies he owes and amounts. This file,” he held up a different folder, “has the people he’s already paid off. And this last one has figures for different departments in the company. But there’s nothing here to connect him to the black market sales or the insurance fraud.”

“Meaning what,” Sophie asked nervously. Eliot knew though, that she knew as well as he did what that meant. 

Nate grimaced. “Cons not over. Not yet. Not even close.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of me wanted this to be longer but I found a good place to stop. 
> 
> Fun fact: I wanted to put a fight scene in this chapter but I couldn't figure out how to make it work. Maybe in a later chapter. 
> 
> I have a later scene stuck in my head, so I'm decently motivated to get more out more quickly so I get the chance to write that soon. 
> 
> Did you enjoy? Anything you hope to see? Leave a comment! Let me know!


	3. You Are Taking Me Apart (Like Bad Glue on a Get Well Card)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot has some soup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOW DID THIS GET AS LONG AS IT DID??? I just... I couldn't find a place to stop. I'm a mess. 
> 
> Chapter title is from "Always" by Panic! at the Disco.

Eliot barely knew what the plan was. He wasn’t tracking the conversation all that well. What he  _ did  _ hear was that it was going to involve beating up a few goons, and so they needed Eliot. 

He would’ve been more excited about that prospect if he didn’t feel crappy. 

“If anyone has any concerns or questions, speak now,” Nate announced, and Eliot could feel his eyes burning a hole in his chest.

He said nothing. Hardison though, was a different story. 

“Maybe we should come up with a plan that doesn’t involve a sick man getting--”

“I’m fine,” Eliot growled. 

“You were practically barking over the coms before with how hard you were coughing. It’s not a problem to be sick, you know?”

“I know. I’m not gonna tell you I’m in great shape or that I won’t need a vacation after this job is over, but I’m good enough to beat up a couple of bodyguards.”

Parker shrugged, arms crossed over her chest. “You don’t have to be.”

And that… that didn’t quite compute. Of  _ course _ he had to be. Who  _ else  _ was going to beat up the goons? Hardison? He’d be squashed in a minute. 

He must not have been the only person giving Parker a blank look, because she glanced around and then started explaining. 

“I just mean you can take a day off if you need to.”

“Thanks for the permission,” he replied blandly. “I have no problem taking a day off if I need to. But, I don’t need to.”

Nate shook his head. “It doesn’t matter at this point. We’re not doing anything until tomorrow anyway. We’ll regroup in the morning and see where we are then. Hardison, I need you to comb through all of that data from the computer. See what you can dig up. Eliot, get some sleep.”

He grumbled low in his chest, malcontent, but he turned and stalked out of the room without another word. 

He may have slammed both Nate’s door and his own on his way. It was purely accidental. Definitely not because he hated that he was being consistently singled out. Definitely not because he felt like a scolded child being sent to his room. 

That would have been  _ ridiculous _ . Eliot didn’t  _ do  _ ridiculous.

He came up to the bed, still unmade from that morning. It looked like the cleaning staff had heeded the “Do Not Disturb” sign. Looking at the mussed pillows, he couldn’t deny that he was pretty tired. His back ached with the need to lay down on something soft.

It took only a minute for him to strip out of his clothes. It took longer to convince himself to climb into bed. It looked cold and empty in there, and this lonely feeling nagged at him in the back of his head. He pushed it as far to the back as he could, and when he finally flopped down and put his head on the pillows, he pretended not to feel an empty ache when he wasn’t manhandled into a hug. 

He tended to get like this when he was sick. Lonely and desperate for affection he would never let himself have, never even thought he’d deserve. It would pass once he felt better. 

He pulled the duvet up over him and blocked out the image of Hardison pulling it off that morning. He shouldn’t be thinking about it. He  _ shouldn’t. _

As tired as he was, he thought it would be difficult to fall asleep. It usually was. But then someone was knocking at the door and when he looked over at the clock, it was two hours later, and he felt groggy and his heart was pounding and he figured he must have been asleep. 

He barely had time to sit up before he heard Hardison yelling that he was coming in and the door opened. 

Eliot watched him carefully as he put a room key back into his pocket. A bag hung off of his other hand. Parker was behind him, but she pushed ahead, sneaking the bag from Hardison on the way depositing her own bag on the bed. 

Eliot reached for it and peered inside. 

It was a bag from the pharmacy he’d seen down the road, and it had a cheesy Get Well Soon card, cold and cough medication, cough drops, and three bottles of water in it. Parker was unloading the other bag by the table, pulling out take out containers and a quart of what he hoped was broth. 

“We brought dinner,” Hardison informed him unnecessarily. “I hope you like chicken soup.”

“It’s chicken soup,” Eliot pointed out, voice hoarse and gruffer than usual. “There’s not much to hate.”

“Well, good--”

“We’ll give you some as soon as you take your medicine,” Parker stated simply, pulling open one of the other containers and bringing it and a plastic fork over to the bed. She sat beside him up against the headboard and looked meaningfully at the pharmacy bag before starting in on her meal. 

He rolled his eyes, but it was mostly for show. His chest and throat  _ hurt _ , and the medicine wasn’t any sort of narcotic. He’d have no trouble keeping his wits about him if he took it. 

He downed two of the pills from the blister pack and cracked open one of the water bottles to wash it down. Hardison watched him do it with an approving grin, then nodded his head at the card with an eyebrow waggle. Eliot rolled his eyes again and frisbeed the card at Hardison’s chest. He frowned, but it was obviously exaggerated, and he put it on the table without a complaint, then handed Eliot the quart of soup and a spoon. 

Eliot investigated the container while Hardison dragged over the chair from the table and sat with his food in his lap and his shoeless feet on the bed. The soup seemed to be mostly broth, with some scallions floating on the top and a few shreds of chicken breast at the bottom. It smelled decent, and it was still hot, so he figured it was good enough to consume.

“Where are Nate and Sophie?” he asked as he started eating. It hadn’t escaped his notice that they were down two teammates, and there didn’t seem to be food in the bag for them. 

“Sophie wanted a date night at some fancy schmancy place a couple of miles away,” Hardison explained, and all that did was make him wonder why he and Parker had decided to come over to him instead of their own date. 

He decided not to ask out loud. He appreciated the food, if nothing else. 

“Who needs fancy restaurants?” Parker garbled around a mouthful of pasta. “The whole thing’s like a really boring grift. I’d rather just take the food home.”

Hardison looked slightly chagrined. Eliot would bet they’d had that conversation a few times, and that Hardison had been thinking more along Sophie’s line of thought than Parker’s. He couldn’t say that he blamed him, but what else did the man expect from a relationship with Parker?

… Well, more than  _ that _ , judging by the look on his face. 

And yet, even as disappointed as Hardison seemed, the expression changed when he looked towards Eliot. There was an attempt at shared commiseration, sure, but also… something softer?

It wasn’t something he wanted to think about, so he didn’t. 

… Was that  _ affectio-- _ No. Not thinking about it. Not at all. 

_ Not. Thinking. About. It. _

He realized he’d been looking at Hardison for far too long to be excused, and so he tore his eyes away from him and scowled resolutely down at his soup instead.

“Thanks,” he grumbled. “For the soup, I mean. And the medicine, I guess--”

“Do my ears deceive me or did Eliot Spencer actually say thank you--”

“Oh, I’m gonna take it back,” Eliot warned, and Hardison lifted his hands in surrender. 

“I’m just saying, man--”

“You’re not saying anything--”

“--would it kill you to--”

“I’m a grateful person!”

“--say thank you every once in a while--”

“I say thank you plenty!”

“--ungrateful ass, I swear you and Nate--”

And then Parker was cackling and almost made Eliot spill his soup. Both he and Hardison shot her startled looks, but she shook her head and refused to say anything about what had made her laugh. And, to some extent, he figured it didn’t much matter; as long as she was happy and smiling, he’d take just about anything wouldn’t he? 

Hardison started laughing along with her after a couple of seconds, still not seeming to understand what was happening, but unable to resist. When they both look at him, mirth still dancing in Parker’s eyes, delight sparkling in Hardison’s, Eliot finds that his cheeks are starting to feel suspiciously warm, and he ducks his head down, taking a spoonful of soup into his mouth to avoid facing them. 

It’s with a mouthful of broth that a coughing fit found him, and it was only Parker’s quick reflexes taking the soup from him that stopped the container from spilling out over the bed. Still, nothing could really stop the contents of his mouth from spewing forth, and he turned his head to the side to avoid spraying all over himself, the bed, or the other two. 

The coughing didn’t stop when his mouth emptied, not that he really expected it to. A small hand-- Parker’s, he figured-- started rubbing against his back, and when he can stop coughing long enough to suck in a breath, Hardison’s holding out his open water bottle to him silently. 

Parker didn’t stop rubbing as he drank, and he wasn’t sure he really fully stopped coughing, only barely managed to suppress it. 

Hardison grimaced at him after Eliot set the bottle down on the bedside table. “You really don’t sound good, man.”

See, the thing is, Eliot knew Hardison was trying to be nice and show he cared. He  _ knew  _ that. That still wasn’t quite enough to stop him from being irritated with the comment though. 

He laughed humorlessly. “Thanks. Kind of you to say. What the hell do you want me to do about that?” Eliot half-shouted the last part. “I took the damn medicine, I drank the damn soup, I slept, ain’t nothing more for me to do.”

Parker pulled her hand off of his back with his outburst, and he barely had time to miss it before she was using it to poke at his arm. “You can not do the job tomorrow and rest instead.”

He glared. “What, are you trying to get rid of me?”

Parker looked unimpressed, but Hardison was visibly startled. “No! Jesus, man, is that what you think? Nah nah nah, never. We need you. You know that. We just don’t want you to make yourself even sicker.”

And, okay, so maybe it wasn’t  _ entirely  _ a sarcastic comment, and he couldn’t  _ fully  _ say that he didn’t need the reassurance, but that didn’t mean Hardison needed to take it so seriously. 

“Dammit--”

“I know, I know. Dammit Hardison. Just shut up and drink your damn soup, Eliot.”

Parker handed it back to him, still frowning, but he didn’t have time to ask her what was wrong before she was getting up and heading for the door. “Get some more sleep. We’ll check on you in the morning.”

Hardison hung back for a moment, still looking entirely too earnest. Eliot just stared back at him, and then, slowly, as if to prove a point, lifted the soup container to his lips and started drinking straight from it. Hardison snorted and shook his head. “Feel better, El,” he said bitterly, before following his girlfriend out of the room. 

If the room had felt too empty when he’d first entered it, it felt even emptier now that he had something to compare it to. They were larger than life, Parker and Hardison, and he could feel the absence of them like a missing limb. 

He glanced at the soup as he brought it away from his mouth. It was still more than half full, but a quart of soup was a lot, and he wasn’t feeling quite so hungry anymore. He stood and went to retrieve the lid from the table where Hardison had left it. He caught sight of the card sitting beside it, propped up half open. He grinned despite himself. It was exactly the kind of cheesy thing Hardison would do, or the well intentioned, only half thought through kind of thing Parker would do. It wasn’t signed or anything, but the big-eyed puppy on the cover screamed of Parker’s fingerprints, and he ghosted a hand over it fondly before he realized what he was doing and shook his head. He left the newly recovered quart right beside it, then headed to the bathroom. 

He was tired enough that he thought he’d go straight back to sleep as soon as he got back into bed, but he lay still for fifteen minutes with his eyes closed and couldn’t manage it. It was too hot, he thought, and the soup wasn’t sitting exceedingly well in his stomach. His legs were beginning to ache, and his head pounded. 

He threw the blanket off of his body and rolled lethargically out of bed. Standing up straight sparked another coughing fit, one that not only worsened the ache in his chest and throat but also tugged painfully at his abdomen with every spasm. He drained the water bottle when he was finally finished and cracked open a new one. (He wasn’t disappointed that no one else was there to open it for him. He  _ wasn’t. _ )

When he couldn’t drink any more, he recapped the water bottle and went to check the thermostat. It was set to 68°. Not his preferred temperature, but certainly not high enough for him to feel this warm. Maybe he  _ was  _ running a fever…? 

He lowered the thermostat anyway, down to 65°, and he took the box of medicine back to bed with him. He glanced over the back of it while he got himself settled. He needed to take more in a few hours, but probably shouldn’t until then. He set the bedside alarm clock to go off when he needed to take the next dose, and then flicked on the TV. 

There wasn’t much of anything on. None of the sports channels were working, and the news channels were either doing public interest pieces on gas prices and house prices and toy prices or op-eds he couldn’t give less of a shit about. The only thing he could find that managed to capture his interest for longer than a couple of seconds was a channel running reruns of M*A*S*H. He remembered his father forcing him to sit on the couch and watch through three episodes at a time back when he thought old sitcoms were beneath him and had no patience for it.

That didn’t seem the case anymore, or, at least, he was forced by the situation to consider it more legitimately than he had as a kid. He sat up against the headboard and let the show play. It was a better alternative than thinking about… He shook his head to refocus. M*A*S*H. He was watching M*A*S*H. Not thinking about…  _ Not thinking. Not. Thinking. _

The card mocked him from over on the table. He determinedly avoided looking at it.

When he realized he was starting to have trouble tracking the action on screen, he finally flicked the TV off. He didn’t even move to lay down on the bed, just let his torso collapse sideways across the pillows instead of staying upright against the headboard, and he fell asleep in a strange L shape, mouth hanging open, definitely Not. Thinking.

Not thinking at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eliot's such an idiot. I love him. 
> 
> I wanted to make the show he sat through Doctor Who or Star Trek, but he'd never in a million years go for it. My next instinct was a Soap Opera as a nice moment of irony, but then M*A*S*H came on in the other room and it seemed like exactly the kind of thing he'd watch mindlessly while sick. 
> 
> Also, fun fact: I was listening to music from an Eliot themed playlist I made while I was trying to come up with a chapter title and "Always" came on. I liked the lyrics as a chapter title and so I went back and put in the Get Well card stuff afterwards. IDK I just thought it'd be cute, you know? 
> 
> Did y'all enjoy? Please please let me know! Leave a comment down below!


	4. I’m Staring Down the Barrel of a 45 (Swimming Through the Ashes of Another Life)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot walks around half naked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was the first scene necessary? Absolutely. (No. Not really. But I love the idea of it so I wrote it. Enjoy.)
> 
> Chapter title is from "45" by Shinedown. (Will I ever stop naming chapters after Shinedown songs? Probably not.)

It was 3 am when the alarm Eliot had set went off, and he cursed Last Night Eliot for thinking Woken Up By Alarm Eliot would have any desire to actually sit up for long enough to take the medicine. He dragged himself upright anyway and he fumbled blindly for the blister pack on the bedside table. 

His hands fumbled at the packaging but his sleep-heavy limbs couldn’t find the dexterity necessary to actually get into it. He was about to just say fuck it and go back to sleep when there was a knock at the door. 

Whoever it was didn’t wait for a response before they were pushing the door open, and Parker walked in, wearing a tank top and pajama pants, her feet stuffed into socks with rabbit heads embroidered at the toes. He was torn between being worried that he hadn’t reacted to a potential intruder, and both irritated and slightly pleased that he had people he felt close enough to not to be concerned by the presence of. 

And then he got concerned as to why she needed to come to him at 3 in the morning. 

“What happened?” he asked, tensing his muscles to be ready to leap out of bed at a moment’s notice. 

A crease appeared between her eyebrows, and she pouted at him. “Relax. Everything’s fine.”

The second she said it, he automatically complied, letting his arms fall slack. Was that strange, he wondered? That she could command him so easily?

“I just wanted to make sure you were gonna take your next dose. You’re due for one right about now.”

“... What did you do, set an alarm?”

“Yes.” She didn’t seem at all embarrassed, and she didn’t seem to believe that there was anything weird about that. 

He wasn’t getting anywhere, and so he stopped trying to think things through, rolled his eyes, and went back to struggling with the packaging on the blister pack. 

Before he could manage it, Parker’s small hands were taking the pills from him. She made quick work of the packaging, and he just watched her while she popped out two pills and pressed them and his water bottle into his hands. He felt his lips quirk up involuntarily, and he dutifully tossed the pills into his mouth, then took a swig of water to wash them down. 

Satisfied, she manhandled him back under the covers and told him to go back to sleep. He wasn’t that big a fan of being constantly ordered around, but in that moment, there was no way he would deny her anything, and he closed his eyes. 

He could’ve sworn he felt a hand touching his hair, but he was asleep before he could investigate further. 

____________________________________________________________________________

The jungle was dense and dark, and the ground was so wet, he could feel droplets flying off of his shoes and hitting his legs as he ran. It didn’t matter after a minute, because the rain started pouring down, filtering between the leaves and vines, and the blood that had dried into a crust on his hands and stiffened his jeans started washing away. 

He couldn’t afford to think about it. His priority had to be getting away from the clearing before Gregorio caught wind of the dozen of his men he’d just left there, dead. 

Moreau had wanted a clean job, he knew, but Moreau had also never seemed to understand the “wet” part of wetwork. It would mean punishment, though, and he didn’t want to think about what that punishment would be. He could still feel the ache in his leg from the last time.

His lungs burned with the exertion but he couldn’t stop running. He wanted so badly to cough and he was relying on every protective instinct he had to keep himself from doing so. 

He didn’t see the thick vine blocking his path until after it had knocked him down. The icy cold barrel of a gun pushed at the back of his head. A thunderous chorus of running boot steps echoed in his ears, somehow not blocking out the cocking of at least six more guns being pointed at him from further. 

Eliot closed his eyes and waited for death to find him. 

Eliot opened his eyes and found he was staring at a hotel room ceiling. The boot steps still rang out into the air. No, wait. Not boot steps.  _ Knocking… _

He pushed himself to sit up, to raise his voice and announce that he was  _ coming,  _ dammit, but a muffled encounter at the door ended in a beep and a click when a keycard was entered into the slot and the door was pushed open. 

Nate was looking sourly at Parker, who was pocketing the key card. 

“Remember how we were talking about  _ boundaries? _ And respecting them?”

Parker rolled her eyes. “Eliot doesn’t mind. It’s  _ Eliot. _ ”

And he kind of wanted to argue, but the desire to cough was only increasing as the seconds passed, and he busied himself with the water bottle, wanting to stave off the fit. 

It didn’t seem like Nate really wanted the conversation over, but when Parker bounded over to the bed and jumped on, missing his lap by inches, he shook his head and moved on.

“What’s your status, Eliot?”

Hardison and Sophie entered the room behind Nate, and Eliot spent a second wishing for less of an ambush before he answered. 

Not that his answer was much more than a shrug.

“Okay,” Nate granted. “Maybe I should be more specific. Should we change the plan?”

“Yes!” Parker, Hardison, and Sophie all shouted at once. Nate didn’t even glance at any of them, holding Eliot’s gaze captive in his own. 

Eliot offered another shrug. “I can still jump into action if I’m needed. But maybe we shouldn’t be countin’ on me bein’ up to my usual standard.” 

Nate nodded immediately. “Okay. You’re in the van with Hardison. We’ll call you in if we run into any trouble we can’t get out of.” 

No one else seemed all that willing to take him at his word, though. 

“You really should stay in bed…” Sophie started, only to be cut off by Hardison, who asked, “Are you really sure this is a good idea?”

Parker, meanwhile, poked at his arm. “This isn’t one of your, ‘I’m Eliot Spencer, I’m invincible!’ things, is it?”

“What the-- Parker, when have I ever said I was invincible?”

“You do kind of give off those vibes, man,” Hardison informed him. 

“I do not! You don’t get to live as long as I have, doing what I do, without being completely honest with yourself about how you feel and properly treating yourself.”

“You got hit in the head by a carnival ride and refused to go to the hospital.”

“I hired a nurse!”

“There’s no way that woman had ever been to medical school.”

“Stop being an idiot, Hardison.” 

“You  _ do _ tend to have a problem letting us get your injuries taken care of,” Sophie prompted. 

“My problem with hospitals does not equate to a problem with-- You know what? Forget it. I’m not talking this over anymore. I’m not saying I’m fine. I know I’m sick. That don’t mean I can’t do my job if I’m needed.”

“I just don’t think we  _ need  _ to need you this time!” Hardison insisted. 

“Yeah? You sure about that? Can any of you tell me how you plan on disarming a guy with a gun pointed at your head? That a halfway decent right hook wouldn’t knock you flat out? Can you plan for every eventuality and tell me for certain that not a single one of them will end with someone getting hurt or worse?” There was a telling silence at that, and he let his point sink in for a moment before finishing. “That’s right. Because that’s what you have me for. So stop trying to convince me you’ll be fine without me when there’s no reason I can’t help.”

He pushed Parker’s arm away when she went to poke him again, and he got out of bed, pushing past Hardison to get clothes and then pushing past Nate to get into the bathroom. 

He was irritated enough that he could even ignore the fact that he was walking around his room in nothing but his underwear, and he could feel eyes tracking his ass as he walked. They wouldn’t be Nate’s, and he hoped they weren’t Sophie’s. But the implications of them belonging to Parker or Hardison or even both weren’t anything he’d let himself consider at the moment.

With the door closed behind him, he breathed deep and tried to forget the way it made his chest burn worse. 

He hadn’t had the time to process the dream he’d been woken from before being thrust into a debate over his health, and he still felt shaky. Not just from the dream, but from the fact that it hadn’t been a dream so much as a memory. His life working for Moreau may have been a long time ago, and he might be in a place leagues better than that, but that didn’t mean that the memories didn’t haunt him. And the memory he’d dreamed… 

He traced a finger around the bullet scar on his side, and then the one on his shoulder. He hadn’t come out of that situation unscathed. Not by a long shot. If Turner hadn’t shown up when he had…

He took another deep breath and let himself cough just a couple of times before he forced himself to shake off the remnants of the dream and get dressed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there wasn't as much pining in this chapter. Or maybe there was? Do I even remember anymore? Whatever, I'm sorry, basically. 
> 
> I always hated the idea that Eliot wouldn't be honest about if he got hurt. We see him using ice and having bandages on all the time. He knows what to do. He just doesn't like hospitals and he knows what the priorities are. He can work through illness if he needs to. it's not *that* bad. (yet)
> 
> Did you enjoy? Do you have questions or comments? Do you just want to make this author's weekend very happy? Please leave a comment down below!!


	5. They're Counting Me Out (But This is My Round)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hardison erases some footage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY! SO! I'm not sure what this was meant to be but I realized I don't know how to spell taser and google is no help so here we are I guess?
> 
> Chapter title is from "Feel Invincible" by Skillet.

He wanted to be around for the mission. He really did. But if he had to sit in the back of the van with Hardison for another minute, he was going to kill him. 

Or do a huge deep clean of the interior. And maybe stuff a sock in Hardison’s mouth. 

The longer Eliot sat there, the more the stench of artificial orange flavor made his head spin. Hardison had gone through an entire bottle of the stuff already, and was on his way to finishing his second. There was candy scattered underfoot, and Eliot was just glad he hadn’t brought out the Cheetos, or he might actually lose it. 

The worst part was, if they’d gone with the original plan, they’d have been done by now. If not for the headache that had started building up behind his eyes, Eliot would have just made everyone resort to it anyway. 

And Hardison just kept… taking care of him. Not intrusively, not coddling, just… doing it. The first time Eliot started a coughing fit, Hardison just thumped him on the back, asked if he was okay, and then passed him a package of cough drops. An alarm on Hardison’s phone went off at 3:00, and the man just dismissed it, then wordlessly passed the medicine Eliot was sure he’d forgotten on his bedside table and a bottle of water over to him. 

Hardison refused to meet his gaze, which made the amused look he was giving to cover up how touched he was sort of worthless. 

Now, both Parker  _ and  _ Hardison had set alarms for him, and he didn’t quite know what to make of that. It was  _ weird.  _ Why would they? Did they… was it a trust thing? Did they not trust him to remember to take his medicine? 

Well, to be fair, if it hadn’t been for the alarm, he probably would’ve forgotten. So they weren’t… well, they weren’t  _ wrong. _

It was half an hour later when things finally got interesting enough to distract him from the issue. 

Nate and Sophie’s voices had been a steady constant over the coms, something they’d all mostly tuned out, but when they turned desperate, they all noticed. 

“Please, don’t do this,” Sophie was asking, over and over, pleading with him, and Eliot held his breath while Hardison begged for her and Nate to tell them what was going on.

“The gun really isn’t necessary,” Nate said, and Eliot could hear the slight undercurrent of panic, even though he covered it up well. 

“Do you need me in there?” Eliot prodded, tense and ready to burst out of the back of the van at a moment’s notice. 

“I can see them,” Parker inserted. Her voice was terse and worried. “I’m in the vents above them. There are seven guys surrounding them, all armed. Brown is also there, also holding a gun.”

“Nate,” Eliot said, “I need you to give me some sort of signal.”

“You know, Tom,” Sophie’s voice came through instead, referring to Nate by his cover name, “I’m beginning to think we should have brought some security of our own.”

“I think you’re right,” Nate responded, and Eliot took that as his cue, leaping out of the van. 

He headed for the emergency door on the side of the building. It sprang open just as he arrived, Hardison’s clever fingers having hacked the mechanism as Eliot hurried. 

“Seventh floor,” muttered Parker. “They’re in Testing Lab C.”

Eliot stared at the stairs with a sinking feeling, but brushed it off as he started running up the stairs. Seven flights was a lot, even at his best, but his team needed him, and he forced the burning sensation in his chest to the back of his mind. He was so focused on running that he almost missed the seventh floor landing and had started on the next flight of steps when he realized and turned around. 

He burst through the door and got strange looks from passing people in lab coats. He paid no mind to them, searching the walls for any sign of Testing Lab C. 

It took a minute, but he found it, and when he went through the door, he immediately disarmed as many of the gunmen as he could. 

He got through three before anyone could work past their shock enough to figure out what was going on, and three more by the time the remaining gunman and Mr. CEO Jamie Brown could get their guns aimed at him. He stood between the two, smiling dangerously. Brown had enough wits about him to be scared by a man smiling while staring down the barrel of two different guns and froze in his spot. The gunman didn’t react the same way. 

A single gunshot sounded. Eliot moved out of the way easily. It struck Brown in the arm, and he screamed and dropped his weapon. Eliot had the shooter disarmed in the next second. 

Parker dropped through the vent grate the second he went down and undid the cuffs Sophie and Nate had been trapped in. 

Other gunmen started getting up though, and Eliot dragged his aching limbs into a brawl. He was fighting too many people on his own, and he wasn’t doing well. A well placed blow to the nose had blood pouring down his face. A kidney shot sent pain shooting through his back. If he had been anyone else, he would’ve lost by now. But he was Eliot fucking Spencer. This may have evened the playing field, but he was still Eliot fucking Spencer. 

When he’d finally gone through all of the gunmen, Eliot took a moment to make sure everyone was well and truly down for the count before he let himself try and catch his breath. Of course, that only made everything burn more, and he started coughing so hard that black dots started popping up in his field of vision.

He wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He knew he couldn’t be, because things were swimming, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to stop coughing long enough to suck any air in, and he hadn’t fallen over yet, but he was pretty sure that someone was supporting him and--

He was breathing in blessedly full lungfuls of air and staring at the ceiling and Parker had both hands on his face and was saying his name.

He reached up to grasp one of her hands reassuringly. His eyes searched the room for Nate. He found him standing behind Sophie, who had concern etched deeply over her face. Even Nate himself wasn’t keeping aloof, eyes careful and critical.

Eliot stared straight into them as he spoke. “So we’re done with this job, right?”

Nate grimaced. “Just have to make sure this guy gets arrested. You did good, Eliot.”

If he was any less exhausted, he probably wouldn’t have accepted the praise. Then again, if he was any less exhausted, Nate probably wouldn’t have been giving it. Given he  _ wasn’t _ any less exhausted, however, he just let the pleased warmth that came from that kind of praise fill him down to his toes, and he let himself lean into Parker’s palm for just a second before he caught himself and forced himself to get upright.

Parker helped him to his feet, and standing up felt shitty, but he could do it under his own power at least. 

God everything hurt. The fight had not gone all that well for him, and passing out had not been a great way to end it. His headache had only been made worse by the likely broken nose. The whole body ache had been made worse by the beating he’d received, by the kidney shots and kicks to the ribs and he wanted to sleep for three days straight. 

Hardison started talking as they got to the staircase. 

“I hacked the 911 network; they’ve gotten multiple calls about shots fired in the building. Cops and ambulances are on their way.”

Nate scowled. “Is there any footage from the lab?”

“No. No cameras in there at all.”

“Okay fine. Here’s the plan. Hardison, corrupt any images they might have gotten of Eliot getting into the building. Sophie and I will stay here to talk to the police. Parker, can you get Eliot to the van and then get back in here?”

“I can get there myself,” Eliot protested, and Nate shot him a disbelieving look but didn’t argue. 

“Alright, fine. Then Parker will stay here too. We’ll say you run security for us and-- do you have your taser on you?”

She grinned devilishly in response and pulled it out of her pocket.

“Okay, when you saw them pull the guns, you started tasing them. Eliot was  _ not  _ here. Do you understand?”

Everyone nodded, and when Nate nodded at him, he started running down the stairs. It was easier than the trip up at any rate, and if he fell down one of the flights of stairs when his foot got caught under him, well, at least no one was around to call him out on it. 

He made it into the van just as the first sirens were beginning to draw close. Hardison passed him a wet wipe without stopping what he was doing and without even looking at him.

“Parker mentioned you had blood on your face when you passed out. I thought you’d need it.”

Eliot didn’t say anything, but he accepted the wipe and started swiping at the area under his nose, checking his reflection in the blackened window to make sure he was getting it all off. 

He’d almost finished when Hardison leaned away from the computer with a cheerful grin. 

“Alright. No footage of you entering or leaving the building. Although I have to say, I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t get to see you take out seven armed guards by yourself.”

“Because you’ve never seen something like that before, right? Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll happen again.”

Besides, Eliot was glad he didn’t have to watch him get pummeled before he won. It was bad enough that the others watched. 

Hardison just smirked. “Is that a promise?”

_ Why did that sound like flirting? _

When Eliot was silent, Hardison let the smirk face and he retrieved an ice pack from the mini fridge he kept stocked with soda. He wrapped it in one of the spare t-shirts they kept for emergencies and then pressed it against Eliot’s face, ignoring the pained yelp in favor of pushing it harder. 

Eliot slapped his hands away and took the ice pack from him, putting it under his shirt and against his aching ribs. 

Hardison watched him with shrewd eyes. “Where else are you hurt, man?” 

“Don’t you have more techy stuff to do?”

“Not before I make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. I’m just gonna steal Parker’s pillow and go lie down in the corner and maybe take a nap. Just… just keep doing whatever you were doing, alright?”

Hardison didn’t seem like he wanted to let it go, but he did, and Eliot made good on his promise and curled up with the ice pack still on his side. 

If he fell asleep smiling at the smell of Parker lingering on the pillow, no one could really prove that, could they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that I don't know what happens when someone passes out from coughing. Do they stop coughing? Do they start again when they wake up? I have no idea o we are just not going to address it. It'd make sense to some extent, I guess, but I can't imagine someone coughing, and then just being unconscious and silent. 
> 
> Also, I think google is going to start advertising cough syrup to me very soon. Or doctors. IDK. My research for this chapter has raised too many questions that I haven't gotten answers to so I'm not gonna think about it. 
> 
> SO! IMPORTANT! Umbrella Academy S2 is coming out on July 31 which means I need to finish this before then because once TUA comes out, I will be able to think of nothing else. Will I succeed? Who the f knows. But I'm gonna TRY. 
> 
> Make my day? Leave a comment? Please?


	6. Pardon the Way That I Stare (There's Nothin' Else to Compare)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot is not being a broody ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... I have no excuses. This chapter is a mess. But then, Eliot is one too, so it's fine. It's FINE.
> 
> Chapter title is from "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

Eliot woke up when a hand pressed against his face, and even in his sleep he must have recognized it as Parker because he didn’t move at all, just opened his eyes and looked at her. The hand felt good. Cool and soft and comforting. 

“You’re really warm,” she told him, and he just kept looking at her because he couldn’t figure out what else to do. 

Thinking was  _ hard. _ Things hurt, multiple things. His chest and his head and his back and his throat. And it was  _ hot.  _ Hot all over except for one spot on his torso that felt icy cold. Or maybe everything was cold. He couldn’t tell anymore. 

He pawed uselessly at the cold spot by his ribs, sleep-heavy hands doing nothing to fix it, but Parker must have realized what he was trying to do, because her hands took his gently and moved them out of the way. She reached up into his shirt and then the iciness was gone and  _ oh right, he had an ice pack pressed against his ribs. _

He tried to track the movement of her hands but it required too much work and he just looked at her face instead. It was a pretty face, he thought, with delicate features that he used to think looked sharp and mean, like she had a knife’s edge for a nose and razor blades for lips, and he used to look at her like a threat to catalogue. It didn’t look sharp and mean anymore. Or maybe he just knew her too well to think that way. It was  _ soft _ now, her face, with eyes that crinkled when she grinned and a mouth that said his name like it wasn’t poison, like it meant trust and home. He liked the way she said his name. 

Hardison, too. He liked the way Hardison said his name. It wasn’t like Parker, they said it differently, but it wasn’t any less like he loved it. Hardison said his name like he was rolling the sounds over in his mouth and carefully measuring out every syllable, making it sound like a prayer and like safety. He sang it, sang it like his favorite song. He was pretty too, Eliot thought. Pretty and well intentioned and so painfully earnest.  _ Bright _ and happy and warm. Hardison had never needed to melt into the team, he’d always been warm and light and--

There he was. His face appeared behind Parker’s shoulder, and he spent a moment just looking at the two of them, at the way they were both so pretty and looked so nice together and looked at  _ him _ so nicely and--

Parker was saying something, wasn’t she? Her mouth was moving, he noted, and he forced himself to stop thinking about their faces so he could focus on what she was saying.

“--hear me? Eliot, are you listening?”

He grunted an affirmative and ignored the pain that flared in his throat when he did, hoping it would dissolve the worry pinching at her brow. She was starting to look sad. He didn’t like when she looked sad. It was his job to stop her from looking sad. 

Wait,  _ was  _ it his job? He couldn’t remember. He was supposed to protect her though, he knew that much, and protecting her should extend beyond the physical, right? Huh. Maybe he should ask Nate later. Maybe when he didn’t feel like talking would rip a hole in his throat.

The furrow in her brow got deeper, and he couldn’t keep from whining, just a little, raising one heavy arm to press against it and soothe it away. She smiled then, just a little bit, and that made him happy, so he let his arm drop.

Hardison laid his hand on his forehead then, after he and Parker exchanged a look, and,  _ oh.  _ That felt really nice. Nice like Parker’s hand had felt. He smiled just a bit and let his eyes flutter closed. 

“You  _ are  _ warm, man,” Hardison told him. Eliot opened his eyes again in response. If Hardison was talking to him, he should look at him. It was only polite. And not really a hardship. 

He  _ liked _ looking at Hardison. 

It seemed like Hardison was waiting for a response, so Eliot shrugged a bit. 

“Is he running a fever?” A voice asked from far away. Or, not that far away really, but too far away for him to care. Not far enough for him not to try and identify it. Female, warm and British.  _ Sophie.  _

“Yeah,” Hardison said back, looking away from him and taking his hand away. He pouted just the slightest bit. He  _ liked _ when Hardison looked at him almost as much as he liked looking at Hardison. He liked when Hardison touched him too. He looked back at Parker. He liked looking at her too. “It’s not that high, I think,” Hardison continued, “but definitely a fever. He’s acting off though.”

“You mean he’s not being a broody ass?” asked another voice, also farther away. This one was male, cool, and American, with more than a little bit of sassy sarcasm.  _ Nate. _

Hardison snorted, and Parker smirked and Eliot smiled a bit too. “Pretty much,” Hardison said, and he looked back at Eliot, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Why aren’t you a broody ass, Eliot?”

Eliot shrugged a little again. “Too much work,” he whispered around his inflamed throat. “Tired.”

“We did wake you up, didn’t we? Sorry, man.”

“C’n I sleep now?”

“Yeah, El,” Parker told him. “Go back to sleep.”

He was about to, when another hand landed on his forehead. He opened his eyes again, another whine escaping his throat. Sophie’s face swam into his field of vision. 

… And now that he thought about it, her hand didn’t feel too bad either. Not as nice as Parker or Hardison, but that wasn’t  _ her  _ fault. 

“What? You don’t trust my temperature taking abilities?” Hardison protested while Eliot did his best not to nuzzle into the hand that had moved to cup his cheek. He failed, but no one commented on it, so maybe they didn’t notice.

“I just had to check for myself,” Sophie said, sending Eliot a small smile.

...Okay, maybe she  _ had _ noticed.

She removed her hand, and Eliot half wanted to sob. He  _ liked _ the touching. He didn’t  _ want _ them to go away. And, for once, he was too tired to argue and put up a brave face. Couldn’t they take advantage of that and just… 

He must have made a noise of protest, because suddenly his head was being lifted and placed on Parker’s lap. She started playing with his hair, and he sighed with contentment before allowing his eyes to drift closed once more.

There was a rumble as the van started, and Eliot could hear Sophie saying something about a drugstore before he fell asleep once more. 

___________________________________________________________

The only thing he could think when he woke up was that it  _ hurt. _ Being awake hurt. Trying to move hurt. If hair had nerve endings, his hair would hurt. 

His second thought was that he wasn’t in bed. He wasn’t even lying down. 

Turning his head hurt, but he did it anyway, and he found his arms slung around Nate on one side and Hardison on the other, and they were pulling him along, out of the back of the van and across to the side door of the hotel. He could just barely hear Sophie and Parker following along behind them.

His feet felt clumsy and too large, but he still managed to firmly plant them on the ground and take his own weight back. Nate noticed immediately and removed himself from his side, but Hardison either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because he kept his grip on Eliot’s wrist and tightened the arm he’d slung around Eliot’s waist. 

“Hardison,” Eliot tried to protest, but his throat burned and his voice came out sounding like he’d been gargling glass. Hardison made a noise in the back of his throat, but did not let him go. 

“Hardison,” Eliot tried again, and this time, the effort sent him into a coughing fit. He covered his mouth with his free elbow, and kept his eyes squinted against the pain that shot through his chest as he coughed. 

“Eliot,” Hardison said, seeming to ignore the coughing fit, “just let me help you, man.”

He was too tired to actually argue, but that didn’t stop Eliot from taking as much of his own weight as possible. 

Besides, he didn’t  _ dislike _ the feeling of his friend under his arm, warm and solid and--

A memory flashed through his head, a memory of waking up in the van, of staring for far too long at Parker and Hardison, of… oh god, did he actually, honest to god,  _ pout _ at them when they stopped touching him? 

More importantly, how the fuck did his defenses slip so far down as to  _ whine? _

He smothered his instinct to pull away from Hardison as an embarrassed reaction, mostly because he  _ knew _ Hardison wouldn’t interpret it as such, and he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, or act like he remembered. If they knew he remembered, he’d never hear the end of it. 

But god, how the fuck did he manage to become such a pining asshole? It was unbecoming. It was unprofessional. It was… actually, he didn’t half mind it, falling in love with the two of them, finding a family in the team, and-- no. No! He was resolutely  _ not enjoying this.  _ Not at  _ all. _

And even if he was, it still wasn’t at all  _ appropriate. _ So it didn’t really matter, did it?

Eliot felt someone move behind him as they approached his hotel room, and then Parker had his room key out of his pocket and was opening the door for them. 

Hardison deposited him on the bed, and Eliot meant to bend down and untie his shoes, but his back screamed with how good it felt to be lying prone on a soft surface, and he found that he couldn’t muster the will to actually move. 

And, as it turned out, he didn’t have to. Parker had managed to divest him of his shoes and jeans before he could so much as blink. And no, that did not turn him on. How dare you even suggest it. 

He growled and glared at her, and Nate told her that that wasn’t appropriate at all, but she didn’t look ashamed at all.

“What? It wasn’t like he was going to do it himself!” 

He may have been stripped out of his clothes by Parker, but he’d be damned if he’d let Hardison manhandle him under the covers like the man had clearly been moving to do, and so he pushed himself up and crawled to the head of the bed, pulling the blanket up around him and then lying back. He pointedly ignored the way his limbs shook from the exertion. 

Sophie deposited a plastic pharmacy bag on the bed and rifled through it, pulling out a thermometer. She unpackaged it, but he snatched it from her before she could put it in his mouth. 

“I got it. Thanks for the help, but I got it. You can go now.” 

Everything ached, his throat worst of all, but he forced the words out of his mouth anyway, and he tried not to feel like the worst kind of asshole and take it all back when Sophie gave him a hurt look. 

“We were only--”

“I know. Like I said, thanks. But I got it from here.”

He resented the knowing look Nate was giving him, and he resented even more the understanding, then pity that flashed over Sophie’s face. The worst though, was the fact that Hardison and Parker barely even reacted. 

Even as Nate and Sophie turned and left the room, the other two refused to move. Parker took the thermometer from his hands and shoved it into his mouth before he could react. Hardison parked himself at the table and pulled out his laptop, throwing Eliot a smirk when he caught sight of the get well card still propped up on the table. 

His glare intensified, but Hardison and Parker still did not respond. Hardison opened his laptop and the machine gun rattle of his typing started up, strangely comforting in its own way, and not irritating the way Eliot had expected it to be. Parker pulled the thermometer from his mouth before he could move when it beeped.

“102.2,” she read aloud, and both Hardison and Eliot winced. Not too high a fever, and definitely nothing scary, but still high, especially for an adult, and  _ especially _ for an adult taking medication. 

Parker shot a look at Hardison, who went into the bathroom and returned a few seconds later with a damp washcloth that he laid over Eliot’s forehead. 

“Stop growling,” Hardison ordered, and he was good enough not to smirk when Eliot immediately obeyed. “Go back to sleep.”

And sure, Eliot was tired, but sleep was an elusive mistress, and Eliot coughed harshly as if to prove a point. 

Parker, meanwhile, had stolen the remote from the floor and settled into the bed beside him, her hip level with his face as she sat and flicked on the television. She wove a hand into his hair as she started to flip through the channels, and he tried to shake it off, but she only replaced it and started gently scratching at his scalp. 

Hardison cheered when Parker hit a channel that was just beginning  _ The Princess Bride _ , and he gleefully took the remote before she could change it and climbed over Eliot to settle on his other side. 

They ignored Eliot’s protests. They ignored his calls for them to leave him alone. 

And no, he wasn’t thrilled with that. He missed when they still found him scary enough to obey. 

But… He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t pleased that they were still there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IS THIS TOO MUCH PINING??? IS THIS GOING TOO WELL?? I CAN'T TELL, SO LET'S JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY, OKAY?
> 
> Fun fact: I didn't intend for the first half of this chapter to be sleep drunk!Eliot letting himself reflect on how much he's in love with Parker and Hardison but it happened. 
> 
> Another fun fact: I am seemingly incapable of writing almost any piece of fiction that deals with television or movies at some point without referencing the Princess Bride. Hardison would be obsessed with that movie though, so we'll ignore the fact that I;m forcing my favorites onto you guys. First M*A*S*H and now this. It's a little ridiculous.
> 
> Comments give me life and make me want to post more, so leave one please, to make this author very happy!!


	7. Intention, Retention (It's All in Your Head)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot does some cardio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It got angsty. There's a lot of mention of PTSD symptoms in here, though the word isn't actually used, so just beware. 
> 
> Chapter title is from "Attention Attention" by Shinedown. AKA, I listen to too much Shinedown and I have trouble naming chapters after almost anything else.

Eliot snuck through the vents, gun held cautiously between his teeth. He’d only get one shot at this. 

He only had the nerve for one shot at this. 

He peeked through the grate. The mark stood in the center of the room, wearing an arrogance that could come only from being the most powerful person in the room. He didn’t look over his shoulder, he was relaxed and confident, he had only one guard in the room with him-- this was a man who knew his enemies were all either dead or lacked the ability to come after him. 

Except for Eliot. 

But then, Moreau didn’t quite know yet that Eliot was his enemy. 

He took the gun from his mouth and took off the safety. He took careful aim, sliding the barrel into a gap in the grate. His aim had to be perfect. If he missed, he was dead. He was dead if he hit too, but at least if he hit, he’d be taking Moreau out with him. 

The vent groaned under his weight. He had less time than he thought. Before he could pull the trigger, he fell. 

Damien looked down at him, smirking in that knowing, dangerous way of his. 

“Oh, Eliot. You should really have known better.”

Eliot watched him draw his fist back. He watched him start to follow through.

He was out of bed and in the hallway before he could process that he’d woken up. He could hear shouts following him, and a different door opened, the door right in front of him. He ran before he could be spotted. 

He wasn’t fully sure where he was. He’d figure it out when he was sure he’d lost his tail. Part of him was concerned with how easy it had been to escape captivity, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

He was right behind him. Moreau must be right behind him. 

He ran out of the building, up one street and down another. His lungs burned, and he was sure his running was more like stumbling, as coughs forced their way out of his throat. He was three blocks gone and had trodden over a broken glass bottle when he realized he was shoeless, and pantless too, but still he would not stop running. 

He knocked someone down, and he wasn’t going to bother to stop and do anything about it when he caught a glimpse of the face and saw Moreau looking affronted back at him. 

The glare melted into a wry smirk. “Eliot,” he beckoned. “Come help me up.”

He backed away, swallowing compulsively, then turned tail and ran once more. 

He turned a corner, and found Moreau waiting for him by the door to a shop. 

“So rude, Eliot. Is that any way to greet your master?”

He swore and ran again, crossing the street and just barely dodging cars that screamed at him to move out of the way. 

Except there he was, leaning against the light pole on the corner, watching with a patient, gleaming grin. 

“You think you can outrun me? When have you ever been able to escape me?”

_ I’ve done it before,  _ Eliot told himself, running down to an alley and ducking into it, tucking himself behind a dumpster to try and get his breathing under control.  _ You’ve escaped him before. You did. You ran and he didn’t come after you; you can escape him again. _

But there he was, looming over him, laughing as Eliot cowered against the brick wall behind him. 

“Tag,” Moreau taunted. “You’re it!”

Eliot closed his eyes and waited for death to claim him. He felt so bad, he couldn’t say it’d be much of a disappointment. 

Only, Moreau never touched him, and there was no gunshot. 

He opened his eyes. There was a man in front of him, now crouched to be on his level, but it wasn’t Moreau. 

_ Nate… _

Eliot almost sobbed in relief. 

“Eliot, what happened?” Nate was pleading, hands held out placatingly. There was no time, though, for questions. 

“Nate, you have to run. Get everyone out of here. He’s here. Moreau’s here. He’s gonna--”

“No, he isn’t. Eliot, Moreau’s in a cell in San Lorenzo. He’s not here.”

“I saw him, Nate!” Eliot shot forward, grasping at the other man’s arms. Why didn’t he  _ get  _ it? “I knocked him over! He was waiting for me-- he’s gonna--”

“No, you didn’t,” Nate told him. “It was just a random person. He’s not here, Eliot. You’re safe.”

Eliot couldn’t breathe. His eyes burned, and he couldn’t manage to unwind his hands from Nate’s shirtsleeves. 

Worse, he could still  _ hear  _ him. His accent warped his name as he murmured it in his head. 

_ Still mine, Eliot. Even now, you still belong to me. _

A hand touched his face, and he jolted, ready to attack whoever it was, but it was only Hardison, and he relaxed before he could even decide he wanted to. 

“You’re fever spiked, Eliot,” Hardison told him. “We need to get you to a--”

“No!” Eliot croaked. “No hospitals. I can’t-- he’ll find me, Alec! He always… No hospitals. Promise me, no hospitals!” 

“Okay,” Nate said. “No hospital.”

Hardison started arguing, but Eliot still felt better. If Nate was on his side, he’d be fine. 

The adrenaline that had been keeping him going started fading, and his head rolled as exhaustion crept up on him. He would have fallen over if Hardison hadn’t caught the motion and moved quickly to his side and caught him. 

“I got you, man. Relax. It’s fine. No hospitals, I promise.”

“You promise?” He’s meant to sound sarcastic, but he didn’t. He just sounded like he was pleading. Which, he supposed, was exactly what he was doing. 

“I promise. Don’t worry, Eliot. I’ve got you.”

________________________________________________________

It was completely miserable, trying to make his way back to the hotel. With the panic receding, he could feel every bit of his cut up feet, and he’d already been feeling shitty to start with. His nose throbbed every time it so much as twitched, and his ribs ached with every breath he took. Even with Hardison holding him up as they walked, it was difficult for Eliot to maneuver his way through the streets he’d run through, trying to escape Moreau. 

He was lucid enough, finally, for him to remember where he’d been when he went running. To remember that Moreau really was locked up in San Lorenzo, and wasn’t anywhere near him. To realize that he’d probably really freaked Hardison and Parker out by running out the way he did. 

He still felt on edge, though, like he was going to turn around and see him smirking from across the street. He felt like he was being watched, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, but that could have been because his entire body was covered in gooseflesh. 

His skin was over-sensitized from the fever. Every brush of air against his bare legs made them tingle painfully. He wanted nothing more than to get under a blanket and curl into a ball for the next three days. 

They met up with Parker and Sophie halfway back to the hotel. Parker immediately wormed her way underneath the arm that wasn’t slung around Hardison. 

“What happened, Eliot?” Sophie prodded. 

He wasn’t sure he could speak well enough to answer-- he wasn’t even sure he wanted to at all-- but he tried anyway. “I’m sorry,” he started. “I got a little freaked. I thought… it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I worried you.”

Sophie didn’t push him any further, which he appreciated. She and Nate were exchanging looks, but she didn’t say anything.

In fact, no one said anything. Not until they had gotten back to the room and Parker had started tending to the cuts on his feet. 

“Tell me what to do, Eliot,” she said quietly, staring down at his feet while she picked glass out of one of the cuts. They were alone in the room while Nate and Sophie went out to pick up dinner and Hardison went to the bathroom. “How can I make this better? I want…”

“Hey,” he whispered, and she looked him in the eye. Hers were tearing, and he offered her a tight smile to try and make her feel better. “I appreciate that, Parker. But you can’t.”

“I have to!” she hissed. “I have to do something! I hate--”

“Me too. But I did… there are things in my past that I just can’t shake. It don’t matter that it’s over, that it’s been over, or where I am now. Shape I’m in, those things are gonna come back ‘n they’re gonna haunt me. ‘M just glad I ran and didn’t hurt you or Hardison.”

“You wouldn’t.” Eliot envied how sure she sounded. He wished he could be that sure. “You wouldn’t hurt us. It doesn’t matter what shape you’re in-- you won’t--”

“You don’t know that, Parker.”

“I do,” there was a finality in her voice that told him not to argue with her. He wanted to anyway, but she looked away from his eyes and back down at his feet, and he thought that might be a better conversation for another time. 

Hardison came back into the room just after Parker had finished bandaging his feet, and the first thing he did was usher him over to the bed and force him beneath the covers. He gave him two pills and a glass of water from the bathroom. 

“Here,” Hardison said. “Fever reducer. You get hotter, you might boil your brain.”

“Did my fever really spike so high?”

“It definitely went up,” he told him. “If you give me a second with the thermometer, we’ll know by how much.”

Eliot took the pills and drained the glass, and then allowed Hardison to slip the thermometer under his tongue. When it beeped, he took a look, and nodded disappointedly. 

“Yeah, it’s higher. 103.9. Can we please--”

“No. Hardison, you promised. No hospitals.”

“Why, Eliot? What exactly do you have against getting better?”

“It’s not--” he cut himself off with a growl that ended in a coughing fit. When he got his breath back, he pulled one in, deep as he could, then let it out again very slowly. 

“I got involved with Moreau after he found me in a hospital. I was being treated for wounds I got fighting some of his men, and he came into my room right after the doctor left. Said I’d impressed him and asked me to become part of his team. And after I left him, he found me in a different one, tried to get me to come back to him. He’s always… It didn’t matter what I did, or what aliases I used. Everytime I landed in the hospital, he found me. Or someone else did. It’s too… I don’t want to not get better or anything. I just… I can’t do hospitals, man. And if I wake up in one, I don’t want to think about what I’d do to get out of there.”

He refused to look at either of them, instead just staring down at his lap and waiting for them to tell him he was being stupid. 

Instead, he only heard the squeaking of bed springs, and then he had Parker plastered over his side, head buried in his neck. It felt suspiciously wet, but he didn’t say anything. It also sent an ache through his ribs that reminded him that they were injured, and she shifted when he groaned to take some of the pressure off. 

“Okay,” he heard Hardison say before the man was sitting on his other side and pulling his head towards his chest. “No hospitals. Thank you for telling us. For trusting us.”

He didn’t say anything, but what he thought was, “Thank you for being people I can trust.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Chapter Notes Fun Fact time!
> 
> 1) I wanted to switch POVs in this chapter and show Eliot running away from Hardison's perspective, but I couldn't make it work, and I thought it'd be weird to switch when the rest of the story has eben from Eliot's POV. I might switch anyway depending on how delirious Eliot gets, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it. (I know that's not the phrase jsut shush)
> 
> 2) I've decided I want to update twice a week, and so I should hopefully have another chapter up on Friday. I don't know if I'll be able to make that happen, but I'll try at least. 
> 
> 3) I really like the idea of Moreau being the reason Eliot doesn't do hospitals anymore. I think there are certain things the man would keep with him, you know? 
> 
> The comments are giving me all the reason I have for updating, so please please please, take a second and leave one for me? Tell me if you want to see other POVs! Or anything else you might wanna see in here! I look forward to hearing from you guys! Thanks so much for reading!


	8. These Dreams I Inflate (Painted Skies in My Brain)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker has feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I broke POV to explore delirious Eliot and Parker's feelings. It's cute, I think, even though it's conCERning
> 
> Chapter title is from "King of the Clouds" by Panic! at the Disco.

Parker didn’t blink as she stared down at Eliot’s sleeping face, at the pained wrinkles that tightened his eyes and the slight frown that warped his mouth. He was paler than she’d seen him in a long time, maybe even ever. He got two bullet wounds in DC, and still he looked worse now. 

Part of her wanted to poke him, the part of her that needed the reassurance that he was alive and would still get irritated with her in a way that was reassuringly  _ Eliot _ , that way that told her he was annoyed, but wouldn’t hurt her no matter how annoyed he got. He was sleeping, though, and she didn’t want to wake him up when he was so obviously so tired. 

Parker could feel Hardison looking at her, and she glanced up at him quickly before her eyes were inevitably drawn back to Eliot’s face. 

Eliot  _ ran  _ from them. Moreau was gone, in the past, and he wouldn’t be bothering Eliot ever again, but he was still around, haunting him, and that wasn’t  _ fair.  _ It wasn’t fair that Eliot was safe with them and would never have to see Moreau again, and yet, he was still in his head enough to make Eliot  _ run away  _ from them. 

“I’m worried too,” Hardison whispered, and she glanced back up at him. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, having shifted his eyes down to Eliot. He must have felt her eyes on him though, because he looked back up at her. 

“He ran away,” Parker said. “He ran away and he’s been hurt and he’s sick and I don’t… I can’t fix it. The problems that I can’t fix, usually either you or Eliot or Sophie or Nate can fix. That’s why we work. That’s why we’re a good team. Because between the five or us we can fix any problem. This… I can’t fix it. You can’t fix it. Eliot can’t fix it. Nate and Sophie can’t fix it. Who’s supposed to fix it if none of us can fix it? How do we make him better?”

“Wait, is this about Eliot being sick or Eliot’s past haunting him?”

“Does it matter? He can’t-- this can’t be allowed, Alec! He’s not allowed to-- we need him. I-- I need him. He’s my--”

“He’s Eliot,” Hardison finished for her when her voice cut out, and she nodded. Her eyes were burning, like she was going to cry, and she didn’t like it when she wanted to cry, but she didn’t know how to stop. “I know. I get it, mama, it’s okay. He’s gonna-- he’s gonna be okay, alright?”

She nodded again. She didn’t know how he knew that, but it made her feel a little better anyway, so she didn’t argue. 

“I don’t-- I’m not gonna lie, Parker. I don’t know how we’re gonna make him not sick if we can’t bring him to the hospital, but we’re gonna figure it out. He’s gonna be fine. And the other stuff… There’s a lot of stuff in his past. None of us have amazing pasts, and Eliot… he’s been through a lot more shit a lot more recently. He’s hurt people and people have hurt him and we can’t-- however much we want to change that, we can’t. And it’s gonna come back and bite him in the ass sometimes. But he’s safe now. He’s with us. He has us. And it doesn’t matter what happened before, because now he’s got us to help him deal with it. And that ain’t ever gonna change, Parker. Not ever.”

She wanted to answer him. She really did. But it was a lot. What he  _ said _ was a lot. She wasn’t used to feelings. She had only just started understanding her feelings for Hardison at all. Her fear about Eliot wasn’t something she wanted to think about, and as much as she could admit to not liking that she couldn’t help as much as she wanted to, she didn’t know how to really respond to what Hardison said. She felt better, but her problem didn’t fully go away, and she couldn’t… She didn’t…

Eliot twitched, and both Parker and Hardison looked back down at him. Parker was immediately on edge, waiting for him to bolt up and out of bed and run again, but Eliot just opened his eyes and stared glassily at the ceiling. 

“Did we miss the plane?” he asked huskily. 

There was silence before finally, Hardison chuckled a little nervously. “What plane, Eliot?”

Eliot’s eyes rolled to meet Hardison’s gaze, and a strange smile spread over his face. “You made an okay rice pudding, Alec.”

Hardison hesitantly asked him what was happening, but Parker had mostly figured it out and ran for the thermometer. Eliot didn’t move when she slipped it under his tongue, just turned to look at her, looking confused. 

He tried to say something, but whatever it was was muffled by the thermometer, and Parker ignored him. 

Hardison took the thermometer when it beeped. He had only barely glanced at it before he was running for the bathroom, leaving it on the bed. She took it and looked at it herself. 

104.8°

Hardison rushed back in with two damp washcloths that he placed over Eliot’s forehead and on his neck. Then he brandished the ice bucket at her. 

“Go, Parker. Get as much ice as you can. Get Sophie and Nate’s ice bucket too, and ours, and bring it all back here.”

She was grateful for the excuse to stop watching Eliot halfheartedly pull at the towel on his neck, and she ran for the door. 

Her stop into her and Hardison’s room lasted only seconds, and then she was banging on Nate and Sophie’s door. She cursed electronic locks she couldn’t pick when it took them too long to come and answer it. Finally, they opened the door, and she didn’t bother to explain, just pushed past Sophie and took their ice bucket as well, and then turned back around and stomped her way to the ice machine at the other end of the hall. 

Sophie followed her. “What happened, Parker?” 

“Eliot’s fever spiked. Hardison told me to go get ice so I’m getting ice.”

The machine rattled and started spitting ice into the first bucket as Nate finally caught up with them. Sophie clicked her tongue. “We need to get him to a hospital, Nate,” she said, but it was Parker who responded. 

“We can’t. We promised we wouldn’t. He can’t-- he doesn’t like hospitals, and I’m not going to break my promise just because he’s asking us about plane trips that aren’t happening and rice puddings Hardison didn’t make. We are fixing this, by ourselves, and he is going to get better and Eliot’s not going to have to wake up in--”

“No hospitals,” Nate cut her off. “I know. I was going to say that maybe we could get in touch with our client. She’s a doctor; maybe she’ll make a house call.”

Parker stared at him, running the idea over and over in her head and not even looking at the ice buckets as she switched out the first for the second. 

“Okay,” she decided. “Call her.”

She filled the third bucket, and Sophie helped her carry the full buckets back to Eliot’s room while Nate disappeared to go make the phone call. 

Inside, they found Hardison soothing his hands up and down Eliot’s arms while he shook and moaned. “The letter,” Eliot was saying. “I need to find the letter. I need to send it-- Emily, she--”

“Man, there is no Emily,” Hardison’s voice was tense. “Just relax, okay? You’re sick, but it’s okay. We’re gonna get that fever down, just breathe man.”

Eliot coughed, and the spasms sounded dry and hoarse and painful, and Parker wanted to drop the buckets and bolt for the door and climb up to the roof and jump off of it fifty or sixty times until she stopped feeling like she was going to explode. She didn’t, bringing them to Hardison instead, who stopped touching Eliot to start filling plastic waste bucket lining bags with ice. 

Eliot whined when Hardison stopped touching him, and Parker took over his motions, sitting on the bed and rubbing her hands across the smooth, hot skin of Eliot’s arms. The smooth, very hot skin. 

Hardison started explaining what he was doing as he filled the bags. 

“We need to get his core temp down. My Nana used to do this when insurance lapsed and one of us had a fever.” Hardison wrapped the ice bags in towels and put them under his arms and by his groin. “I don’t know if it works for adults or even if it’ll work for long, but maybe we can get him lucid again.”

Eliot was fighting now, weak limbed and ineffectual, but still trying hard to get away from the ice packs. Parker kept touching him, moving from his arms to hold his face in her hands and try to pull his attention to her. 

“Eliot. Look at me, Eliot. Look at me. It’s going to be okay, okay? You’ll be fine. You just gotta hang in there for a bit.”

“Parker,” Eliot groaned. “He’s spilling the ice cream everywhere, Parker. It’s all over me.”

“It’s okay. I’ll help you clean it up later. You just need to stay still for a bit first.”

He nodded desperately, though he kept moaning pitifully, he stopped moving. HIs eyes fluttered shut, but opened again a few seconds later. 

“Is this real, Parker?” he pleaded. “Is this real life? Am I going to wake up again?”

“This is real, El. Real life.”

“You promise? Because I don’t want to wake up again. I keep waking up by myself. I keep waking up and remembering that you’re dead. I don’t want-- Is this real? Can this be real? I don’t want this to be a dream.”

Eliot kept rambling, coughing in the middle of sentences, and Parker refused to acknowledge the tears running down her face as she fought for him to accept that she was alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Chapter Fun Facts!
> 
> 1) This was almost from Hardison's point of view, but I made a decision to switch to Parker's when I was working on it one night, and even though I forgot those reasons, I decided to keep it
> 
> 2) I looked up the ice pack trick on google to fact check myself and it turns out that it's not generally a recommended method of fever reduction as far as a three minute google search knows. So bear in mind, lovely readers, that I am not a doctor, and nor are any of the characters in this story, and you should NOT be getting medical advice from fanfiction, or from Nana Hardison's tops and tricks to childhood fever reduction. 
> 
> 3) I wanted to put other things in this chapter, but then it was 11:45 and I wanted the chapter up and I thought "this is fine right?" and I decided that even if it wasn't, it was fine enough for now. 
> 
> So what did y'all think of delirious Eliot? I hope you liked it, because I don't think it's over yet. 
> 
> Please take two seconds to comment down below. Just a minute is all it takes to make this author very very happy.


	9. It's Killing Me (You Know I Can Barely Breathe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot dreams. Hardison and Eliot take a bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it again. Hardison gets his POV shown in the second half of the chapter. 
> 
> Also, possible trigger warning for some mention of violence against children. It's nothing major or graphic, but I thought I'd give a warning for anything not completely canon-typical. 
> 
> Chapter title is from "The Crow and the Butterfly" by Shinedown

Eliot couldn’t think properly. He was chasing leads that went nowhere, and he could grasp snippets of thought only for a moment. He couldn’t remember his own name half the time. 

He kept waking up, confused, only to realize he wasn’t awake when he woke up again. One minute he was in a hospital, mind full of images of fiery destruction, of his team dying, of running and running and not getting close enough, fast enough. The next minute he was in his bed, at home, by himself, remembering he’d just left them at the brewpub. Then, he was in the hotel room, and he thought they’d had a flight to catch, so he asked Hardison, but his mind flew to the next thought before he could really think about it. Then he was in an unfamiliar room, and it was two years since he’d watched them die, and he struggled to find the strength to get out of bed. Then he was sitting in the back room of the brewpub, and Hardison was shoving a spoonful of pudding into his mouth…

It just kept going. On and on, over and over. Wake up, wake up, wake up again. 

The first time he could really tell he was dreaming, it was because he saw a line-up of people in front of him. Moreau, Florez, Vance, Quinn, Hardison, Parker, Sophie… and in the middle of it all, Nate, arms crossed over his chest. Those people… they didn’t all belong in the same place, at the same time, looking at him in the same way, in that disappointed, let-down way they were all looking at him, that way that made his stomach sink down to his feet and made him want to throw up and  _ fix it all  _ and--

“Why’d you do it, Eliot?” Nate was asking, and he opened up his shirt and  _ oh look, Nate was bleeding _ . 

Now that he was looking, almost all of them were bloody. Vance had a bullet hole in his abdomen. Florez was leaking blood from his ear. Parker and Hardison had twin puncture wounds in their foreheads. Sophie had a hole in her chest where her heart was meant to be. 

Moreau was pristine, and he was smirking.

“Always full of surprises,” Florez mocked. 

“You took an oath,” Vance reminded him. 

“You’re not that man anymore,” Sophie taunted him.

“You risked  _ my  _ life,” Hardison prodded. 

“What did you do?” Parker wondered.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to pummel Moreau into the ground. He wanted to rush over and try and stem the blood flow from any of them. His limbs were heavy though, tired and weak, and he kept yelling at himself to move, to do  _ something _ , but he couldn’t get himself going. 

And then he opened his eyes and saw a stranger hovering over him, and he almost threw a punch straight at her solar plexus before he felt a familiar small hand holding on to his own and also realized that the heavy weakness in his limbs had not gone away and would have made it a pretty ineffectual punch. He managed to barely turn his head, and his eyes confirmed that it was Parker holding his hand. 

He searched her head for any wound at all, but all he found was a wrinkled brow, and he let his eyes close at the relief he felt. 

The stranger was talking to him, asking him questions, but Eliot couldn’t focus enough to parse out any of the words, so he just gripped Parker’s hand a little bit tighter and let himself cough. While the spasms wracked his body, something cold pressed against his chest, and then someone was pulling him forward, and the cold thing was pressed against his back. 

His head wound up against someone’s shoulder, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a stretch of dark skin.

Then the dark skin was a dark sky and when he blinked, he opened his eyes to find himself on a stretch of deserted beach, the night sky void of stars, of light. He only knew it was a beach from the feeling of wet sand molding up against his back, his butt, his legs. 

He needed to run. 

He stood to try, but his head swam as he got upright, and he fell into the surf. Water surged into his mouth. It tasted thick and salty, felt like sludge on his tongue. He resurfaced, and was in a bathtub, alone. He fell asleep holding a cup of tea, of berry flavored herbal tea, and it had spilled into the water in the tub, leaving swirls of faded pink in the water, looking like blood…

It  _ was  _ blood. Another drop fell from the ceiling, and he looked up to find a little girl’s bleeding carcass hanging above the bathtub. He opened his mouth to scream, and was rewarded with a metallic taste on his tongue as blood dripped into his mouth. He coughed, coughed, coughed, and the taste wouldn’t leave his mouth.

It was his blood, he realized, as the little girl disappeared, and he opened his eyes in the back of the van. Hardison was holding onto one hand as Parker held the other, and he was lying between them, and both of their hands were stained with blood.

“Did Eliot make it?” Hardison asked, voice pained and barely there, and he mustered enough strength to reply, “Age of the geek, brother.” His own voice was a hoarse rasp, and he could feel pain in his chest every time he tried to breathe, but at least he knew he wasn’t going to have to live in a world without them.

He opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes.

_ Please. Oh god, please, just let it end. Be done. Please. _

_____________________________________________

Dr. Valdez was a kind woman to make a house call, Hardison thought when he let her into the room. But then, she probably felt like she owed it to them. She was their client, after all, and they just got her her job back. 

It wasn’t a particularly long exam, even after Eliot woke up long enough to almost attack the good doctor. Hardison was pretty sure it was only Parker’s hand in his that stopped him, and he took a minute to be grateful that they’d insisted on being present. When Dr. Valdez had finished, she made to gather the four of them in the corner of the room, only Parker wouldn’t let go of Eliot’s hand, and Hardison, who had been a pillow for him when Dr. Valdez had needed access to his back, wasn’t any less reluctant to let him go. 

She settled on just Nate and Sophie, but her voice carried to the bed, and he heard every word. 

“As far as I can tell, it’s acute bronchitis. His cough is mostly dry, so it’s not pneumonia. In any other situation, I’d tell you to leave him be and make sure he got plenty of fluids, but that fever is concerning. And those cracked ribs really aren’t helping matters.”

“So what do we do?” Sophie asked, seeming remarkably calm, despite her obvious concern. Or maybe it just seemed calm because, to Hardison, he felt like he wanted to tear his skin off for want of a way to help. 

“I’m going to take a little blood,” Dr. Valdez said. “I think he may be suffering a bacterial infection on top of the viral, and if I’m right, I can take care of that with antibiotics, and leave his body a little more able to fight off the bronchitis with over the counter medications. Until I get those test results back though, I want you to put him in a cool bath. It should help lower the fever a bit. Not too cold-- lukewarm is better-- and don’t leave him in there for too long. Twenty to thirty minutes tops. Keep an eye on that fever, and call me if it spikes again. I brought things to start an IV as well, and I’ll do that right after I draw the blood, just to make sure he stays hydrated. One of you should call down for clean sheets, and change them while he’s in the bath. I’ll call you when I have answers, alright?”

Nate agreed quickly, and gave his thanks from all of them, and she accepted it before coming over to draw the blood and start the IV with saline. 

She left as soon as she was finished, and Nate took charge of following her instructions. 

“Sophie, go start the bath. Hardison, Parker, strip him down to his boxers. I’m going to go call the front desk.”

No one even glanced twice at him, just moved immediately to follow orders. Hardison held Eliot up while Parker stripped his shirt off of him and undid the bandages around his feet. Sophie ran for the bathroom, and they heard the water start a moment later. 

Nate finished up with his call just as the bath was filled, and he helped Hardison lift Eliot from the bed and bring him into the bathroom, Parker following behind with the IV pole. 

They put Eliot in the tub, but realized pretty quickly that they’d have a problem keeping him from drowning. Hardison didn’t give himself time to hesitate or freak out. He just stripped down to his own underclothes and climbed into the tub with him, pulling Eliot to his chest, letting his head fall backwards onto his shoulder and refusing to react to the shock of sitting in a cold tub. 

Nate took Eliot’s temperature while Parker went to retrieve clean, dry clothes for him and Hardison. Sophie left the room too, and that just left Hardison with a delirious best friend and an obviously, dangerously thinking mastermind. 

Nate gave him a searching look while Hardison pointedly did  _ not _ take a moment to appreciate the ability to be close to Eliot without the other man arguing with him.  _ Not the time, man. Not the time. _

“How are you doing, Hardison?” Nate asked as he removed the thermometer from Eliot’s mouth and glanced at the readout. He didn’t announce the results, but Hardison had a pretty good idea what they were just by juxtaposition to the man’s body and didn’t call Nate out on it. “You’ve been very quiet about this whole thing.”

Hardison tried to formulate a response and started absent-mindedly scooping up lukewarm water with his hands and pouring them over the bits of Eliot the water didn’t reach high enough to cover, avoiding his face. 

“I don’t like this,” he finally told Nate. “I don’t like Eliot being sick and not being able to do anything about it. I want… I know how to treat a sickness. I know how to take care of people. And it’s not that part I mind-- hell, I kind of like being able to take care of Eliot for once. But I don’t… This isn’t an easy thing to fix, and Parker’s freaking out about it so much, I haven’t been able to think about the fact that I’m on the same page as her.”

“You love him,” Nate said, very simply, and Hardison sputtered. 

Because of  _ course  _ he loved Eliot. Eliot was his best friend. But Nate had said love like  _ in love _ , and that wasn’t something he was thinking about, not when he had a girl fetching him clothes who he loved more than anything. 

That didn’t mean Nate was  _ wrong _ but being right didn’t give him the right to say anything. 

“I did tell you I’m dating Parker, right? We made that announcement? I very distinctly remember making that--”

“I didn’t say you don’t love Parker. I said you love him. It’s fine, Hardison. I’m not about to get in the middle of your relationship. I’m just… let’s call it making an observation. You love him. I’m pretty sure Parker does too. And he… well, he’s not exactly subtle. I don’t know if he wants to be, but he’s pretty far gone on the two of you.”

He shook his head at that, but it did make sense. But that raised questions he couldn’t consider at the moment, so he tossed out the latter observation in favor of the former.

“What did I do? How-- is it that obvious?”

Nate stared. “Hardison, you bought the man a brewpub.”

“That was a personal business venture that he inserted himself into!”

“You knew exactly what was going to happen. You’re a genius, Hardison. Don’t play stupid now. Besides which, you didn’t freak out at all about the tub. I’d never have pegged you as the cold bath type, and the only person who reads people better than me is Sophie. But you… You just climbed right in, and you haven’t complained about much of anything recently now that I think about it. You’re not being all that subtle either.”

“I--”

“I don’t really care, Hardison. Like I said, it’s just an observation.”

Hardison smirked. Nate was like Eliot in some ways, he thought. He could swear up and down that he didn’t care, but he loved them. He did care. He was just an obstinate asshole. 

God, Nate really was such a dad friend, wasn’t he?

He huffed a laugh. “Did you ever see this coming?” he wondered aloud. “Us becoming a family?”

“I seem to recall being dragged into this completely against my will.”

“Yeah, okay. Who are you trying to kid, Nate? Come on, face it. We stole us a family that first day. The minute you called me and told me to help you set up an office for Leverage. You did this. We just followed through.”

Nate didn’t respond, but Hardison had a feeling that if he hadn’t been distracted by Eliot launching himself into a coughing fit that sent blood stained mucus flying out of his mouth in that moment, he would have seen a small, reluctant smile on Nate’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUN FACTS!
> 
> 1) An alternate title for this chapter is "Your Words Still Serenade Me (Your Lullabies Won’t Let Me Sleep)" which is also a lyric from "The Crow and the Butterfly." I made it what it is because I've been waiting for a chance to use these lyrics for EVER.
> 
> 2) The things said to Eliot during the lineup (except for Nate's line), were explicitly taken from canon, and Parker, Sophie, and Hardison's lines were all taken from the park scene in The Big Bang Job. I thought it would be interesting to give them a darker context when spoekn by people who are obviously hurt, and implied to have been hurt by Eliot's hand. 
> 
> 3) This does take place before The Long Goodbye Job, but the idea that the story Nate came up with in that episode having been based in part off of a dream took root, and this happened. I don't think I'll include this in the story, but my idea here is that Eliot and Nate get drunk one night a few weeks after the events of the story, and Eliot tells him about the dream, which partially sparks his idea for the con in the episode.
> 
> 4) Hardison wasn't supposed to have a POV in this chapter, or at all really, but then the portion with Eliot's POV was too short, and I wanted an explanation for what's happening while Eliot's delirious. 
> 
> 5) Hardison also wasn't meant to be in the tub with Eliot, but then I remembered the pining value in a scene like that, and the conversation with Nate was born. 
> 
> 6) I think google probably thinks I'm ill at this point. My search history is getting concerning. I tried to make this as medically accurate as possible considering they aren't going to a hospital and I definitely do not have a medical degree. 
> 
> So here we are! I humbly fall to my knees and ask my lovely readers to please, please, take a moment and leave a comment! They make my entire night/day, and knowing people are reading helps give me reason to want to finish the story!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, my loves! Stay tuned for more!


	10. It Won't Pull Me Down (The Weight of Impossible Days)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie and Parker pick up dinner. Nate reflects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I'd complete the circle and add in Nate and Sophie's perspectives. I also don't know if the chapter title matches, but I like the song so I'm keeping it. 
> 
> Chapter title is from "Atlas Falls" by Shinedown.

Sophie met the housekeeper bringing the new linens at the door of the room with a fifty dollar bill and an apologetic smile. Parker was laying changes of clothes out on the armchair for Hardison and Eliot, and she didn’t move as Sophie led the woman through to the bed and let her start changing the sheets. 

If the woman wanted to say anything about the sweat-soaked sheets, the fifty dollars was enough to keep her from doing so, and Sophie was ushering her back out the door within a couple of silent, tense minutes. 

Nate and a towel clad Hardison brought Eliot back into the room, also wrapped in a towel. Nate dragged the IV pole behind him. 

God, Eliot looked terrible. The corners of his mouth were tinged with red, like they’d been stained with blood. And he was pale, so pale, with a bright, fevered flush in his cheeks and bruised swelling across the bridge of his nose, spreading under his eyes. His eyes were open, but glazed and barely present, and he trembled between his teammates. 

It was killing her to see him like that. Something inside of her longed to wrap him in a blanket and hide him far away from anything that could hurt him. 

Nate motioned for Sophie to take Parker and leave the room, and despite Parker’s objections, Sophie obliged, taking her wrist gently and pulling her out of the door and down the hall.

“We’ll pick up food,” Sophie called back, and she brought Parker to the elevator. 

“Why did we leave?” Parker asked as they boarded.

Sophie was never careless with her words, but she chose them especially carefully in that moment. “I don’t know how well Eliot would take knowing that we were in the room when he wasn’t dressed.”

“But Nate and Hardison are still there.”

“Hardison needs to change too, and someone needs to help Eliot. Nate won’t… he won’t look, he won’t judge, he won’t be surprised or taken aback, he won’t really care. Eliot sees being naked in front of someone as very intimate, and he won’t appreciate knowing that we’ve seen him.”

Parker was scowling. “That’s stupid. Besides, it’s just us. What are we going to do?”

“That’s not… Parker, that’s not the point. It’s about boundaries. Sometimes, people have certain things that they don’t like, and even if you think it’s stupid, it’s not up to you to decide that.”

Parker’s scowl turned conflicted, and was silent while she tried to wrap her head around that. 

“Like how Hardison doesn’t like being pushed off of tall buildings even when he’s all hooked up to a rig,” Parker said slowly.

Sophie winced. “A bit like that. People have boundaries, Parker. And--”

“No, I get it. You don’t cross boundaries. Hardison didn’t for me, and now I can’t for Eliot.”

That had been easier than Sophie expected, and so she felt like she could prod a little bit more without hurting anything. 

“Speaking of Eliot… How are you doing, Parker?”

She scowled again as they got off of the elevator in the lobby. “What are you talking about? What does that have to do with Eliot?”

“We’re not blind, Parker. Eliot being sick like this, it can’t be easy for you to deal with.”

“Eliot’s going to be fine. He has to be.”

“Of course he is, but Parker--”

“No. That’s it. There’s nothing else to talk about.”

“You love him, Parker!”

Sophie was expecting that declaration to take her by surprise a bit, especially given the way she’d had to explain her feelings for Hardison to her. Except Parker didn’t react at all, only exited the hotel and started down the block towards a Chinese takeout place. Sophie hurried to follow after her. 

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. He’s Eliot. And?”

Sophie was rarely flabbergasted, but Parker seemed consistently able to leave her speechless. 

“That’s not… You don’t think that’s a big deal?”

Parker rolled her eyes. “After figuring out how I felt for Hardison, it wasn’t that hard to figure out how I felt about Eliot.”

“And Hardison--”

“What? What’s the problem? I love Hardison and I love Eliot. Hardison loves me and I think he loves Eliot. Eliot-- I’m almost positive Eliot loves us, or he would have killed us by now. I don’t think anything else really matters.”

And, well, Sophie had had a feeling that was the case, but to hear Parker say it, and to hear Parker say it before anyone else was startling. 

“You never said anything,” Sophie pointed out after a minute.

“I don’t like thinking about it,” Parker shrugged. “And I don’t want to push anything. He-- we agreed. We change together. As long as we keep changing together…”

They were silent after that. They finished the walk to the restaurant like that, but Parker paused before entering. 

“I got scared,” she told Sophie. “I’m still… I know I said I was fine but I’m scared. He was-- he didn’t know what was real. He thought I was dead. That we were dead. And I couldn’t--”

“Parker, hey…” Sophie wrapped her arms around the girl, who’s eyes were big and teary. Parker didn’t move to return the hug, and Sophie withdrew after a second. “I know it’s scary. I know you’re worried. It’s going to be okay. Dr. Valdez is a great doctor, and she’s going to make sure he’s okay.”

“It’s not just that he’s sick, though. His-- he ran! He ran away! And Hardison said that he’d be fine, that we just had to be there for him and he’d be okay but I don’t… I don’t know how to do that.”

“You don’t have to know,” Sophie soothed. “You have done nothing but be yourself since we became a team, and that was enough to convince Eliot to stick around. You said it yourself; he loves you. Anyone with eyes can see that he loves you. And he trusts you. And when I… when I see the person he is now versus the person he was when we first met… he’s so much happier now. With us. With you and Haridson. And he is never going to want or need for you to do anything but be you.” 

She offered Parker a reassuring smile, then turned to enter the restaurant. She pretended not to notice when Parker swiped quickly at her eyes before following. 

____________________________________________________

Once Sophie had taken Parker out of the room, Nate and Hardison put Eliot on the bed, wrapped in towels. It took both of them to exchange Eliot’s soaked boxers for fresh, dry ones. Nate was careful not to look down while they did, but he couldn’t say the same for Hardison. Hardison was smart though, and Nate figured that he’d be aware of what boundaries not to cross, so he wasn’t too worried. 

Parker definitely wasn’t fully aware of those boundaries which was why he had Sophie take her out of the room. 

Once they’d gotten Eliot into sweatpants, Nate started moving him in between the sheets while Hardison collected his clean clothes and went into the bathroom to change. As soon as he got Eliot settled, he took his temperature, then called Dr. Valdez.

His temperature went down a few fractions of a degree, but he was still too warm for Nate’s comfort. Not that he expected anything else. The doctor had been clear that the warm bath was nothing more than a hail mary, that Eliot needed significant treatment to get better. Taking him to a hospital would have been their best plan to help him, but considering what the trade-off would have been, considering doing it probably would have freaked the man out, Nate wasn’t feeling too bad about the decision. 

Besides which, Nate wasn’t thrilled at the idea of sitting in the waiting room or next to a hospital bed for any one else he cared about. 

He’d been forcing himself to ignore the flooding memories from the second he heard Eliot’s first bad coughing fit over the coms. It was all far too reminiscent of Sam-- the coughing, the fever, the delirium… when he’d walked into the hotel room after calling Dr. Valdez the first time, he’d half expected to see a little boy lying in the bed, and not the fully grown man he’d found. 

As the phone rang, Nate reached for one of the damp washcloths that had taken up residence on the nightstand and used it to dab at the blood speckled corners of Eliot’s mouth. 

There was another thing that was reminding him too much of Sam.

“Mr. Ford,” greeted the voice of Dr. Valdez. “His fever hasn’t gone up, has it?”

“No, no. It actually went down a little bit with the bath. He was coughing up blood though, and I thought that was the kind of thing I should inform you of.”

The doctor hummed her agreement. “Is he coughing up blood, or is it just bloody mucus?”

“The latter.”

“Well, then, I’m not too worried. If it was the former I’d be concerned about a possible pneumothorax or other injury, considering those cracked ribs, but bloody mucus isn’t uncommon with bronchitis. The coughing has probably just caused some bleeding in the throat or lungs. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it gets worse. I just started the blood tests. I’ll call you back in a little bit with the results. In the meantime, try not to worry too much. I know it’s a lot, but if the issues are what I think they are, he should be alright in a bit.”

“I know. I… I know.” 

And he did know. He  _ did _ . But Hardison wasn’t lying when he’d called them a family, and knowing Eliot would be okay didn’t stop the worry.

He wasn’t unaccustomed to viewing Hardison or Parker with a sense of fatherly pride. He looked at them sometimes, and he felt like the two of them had sort of adopted him as a father, and as much as he lied to himself and everyone else about it, he’d come to see them a bit like a son and daughter too, only in a way that didn’t make it weird that they were together. 

Eliot, though, was old enough and usually mature enough that Nate didn’t tend to get that feeling as often. As much as he felt like a father policing little kids when Eliot, Parker, and Hardison would argue sometimes, Eliot on his own wasn’t really in need of the same sort of guidance he found himself feeling responsible for providing Hardison and Parker with. 

But looking at him sick in that bed… maybe it wasn’t just the other two that had stolen themselves a father figure. 

“Thank you, Dr. Valdez,” he said.

“No, Mr. Ford, thank you. I just got a call from HR. I have my job back. You… This is the least I could do.”

He smiled, enjoying the warm feeling that sparked in his chest at the words. “I’m glad we were able to help. Talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

He hung up as Hardison walked back into the room. 

“Was that the doctor?” Hardison asked. 

“Yeah. I called about the blood. She said it shouldn’t be anything to worry about but to keep an eye out. She’s gonna call back soon with the blood test results.” 

He looked back down at Eliot, eyes lingering on the bruising that spread across his ribs. No one had wrapped them, or bandaged his nose after the fight in the office building. It wouldn’t be completely unlikely for the blood to be coming from his untreated injuries. They really should have been paying more attention. One of these days, he was going to get hurt and they wouldn’t remember to treat it until it was too late. 

Although…

He watched as Hardison picked the sheet up off of Eliot’s feet and gathered bandages and antibiotic ointment, then started treating the cuts on his feet from his barefoot expedition earlier. Nate remembered seeing them bandaged earlier, tidier than Hardison’s work now, in a way that marked Parker’s influence. Maybe between the two of them, Eliot would be covered. 

They had a good thing going, the three of them, even if Eliot wasn’t a part of the relationship the way Nate thought they’d probably all prefer. He couldn’t say exactly what had happened in DC, only what he’d gotten from the news and their stories after the fact, but he knew that they’d become even more of a unit than they’d been beforehand. 

The nerves that had been tingling in the pit of his stomach every time he thought about his plans settled a bit. He knew Eliot wouldn’t leave them, and he knew those three would be able to handle anything that came their way. 

Hardison caught him looking. “What? Why are you staring? Someone’s gotta make sure these cuts don’t get infected!”

Nate just smiled. 

________________________________________________

Dr. Valdez called Nate just as Sophie and Parker started distributing the take out boxes. 

“Dr. Valdez! How are those tests going?”

“Finished,” she replied. “I was right. There’s a bacterial problem as well that’s causing the brunt of the fever. I’m bringing over some IV medications, mostly just a broad spectrum antibiotic and a nutrient blend, as well as more saline and some oral tablets for when he’s back to being lucid. I’ll be there soon, maybe twenty minutes?”

“Sounds good. It-- This is good, right? This is good news?”

“It means we know what’s happening, and we have a plan to fix it. Unless he’s got something completely out of left field or he had an allergy to anything…”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well then, yes. This is good news.”

“Okay,” he couldn’t keep the relief from his voice completely. “We’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon, Mr. Ford.”

They hung up, and he relayed the news to the rest of the team. It would be a stretch to call their reactions pleased or relieved, but they weren’t the opposite either, and he took that as a win. 

Eliot moaned from the bed, and Nate watched Parker move to his side so quickly he almost missed the motion, while Hardison shifted in his position at Eliot’s side on the bed, placing a comforting hand on his forehead.

Eliot’s eyes blinked open, and his eyes darted between Hardison and Parker, who had taken his hand. He smiled a loose, open grin Nate had rarely seen before.

“Did you check on the chicken?”

Hardison swallowed and shook his head, trying to return the grin. “I’ll go check it in a minute. Don’t worry about it.”

Eliot hummed, low in his chest, and he coughed hard. Parker caught the bloody mucus that spewed from his mouth in a tissue. His eyes rolled over to her, and she smiled at him as she made the tissue disappear. 

“Parker,” he croaked, and she nodded. “Parker, my chest hurts.”

“I know, Eliot. I know. You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

“It’s hot,” he added. “Can you turn on the air?”

Sophie brought over a new damp washcloth from the bathroom, and Hardison took it from her, and lay it on his forehead. 

“We’ve got you, Eliot. Go back to sleep.” 

He nodded and closed his eyes, but they flew back open and he turned his head to look at Nate. 

“Nate, I’m sorry.”

“For what, Eliot? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t know why I did it. I’m sorry I did. I didn’t mean--”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“You’re forgiven, Eliot.”

Eliot finally let his eyes fall closed again, and Nate watched him carefully. It was anyone’s guess what was pressing on him, but he sounded desperate for forgiveness, Nate wouldn’t hesitate to provide it. 

Dr. Valdez couldn’t come soon enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No fun facts this chapter because I'm pressed for time and I want to get this up. I hope y'all enjoyed!
> 
> Please leave a comment and give me some validation! Are y'all still reading? Is this still intriguing? Let me know!


	11. I Need the Sun to Break (You've Woken Up My Heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot is normal Eliot again. Well, maybe not quite yet. But almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UMBRELLA ACADEMY IS COMING OUT ON FRIDAY AND I'M NOT FINISHED YET SO I'M P A N I C K I N G!!!
> 
> So anyway how are YOU guys doing today?
> 
> Chapter title is from "Need the Sun to Break" by James Bay.

The silence that surrounded him when Eliot woke up felt oppressive after his dream marathon, after the screams and the waves and the questions and the demands. The room was dark and still, and his throat and chest were sore and tired. An ache in his arm told him that there was a needle stuck in the crook of it, and the only thing that stopped the panic rising in his chest was the weight of a familiar small form curled up against his chest and a long fingered hand buried in his hair. 

As the fog of his fevered dreams fell away, he became aware of the sound of deep even breathing, and it ached, but he turned his head anyway, looking around and finding that the weight on his chest was Parker and the hand in his hair was Hardison’s. Sophie was curled up in the armchair in the corner, asleep. Nate was watching him from a chair beside the bed. 

“Nate,” the whisper made him want to cough, but he resisted the urge, knowing it would make everything hurt more. “What’s-- what day is it?”

“Friday, as of three hours ago.”

Friday… The fight in the lab had been on Tuesday. So he lost… he lost three days? 

The needle. The needle in his arm, it led to an IV. Had he been drugged?

He must have jolted, because the hand in his hair tightened and then the fingers ran through to the ends and back to the top. Hardison hadn’t fully woken, but he still made a comforting shushing sound when he shifted, and when Eliot made himself relax, Hardison was out again. 

“The IV has antibiotics and nutrient supplements,” Nate told him, voice quiet and reassuring. “You’ve been out of it with fever for a while.”

He grumbled his understanding. He still felt too hot, but at least he wasn’t delirious. 

“How do you feel?” Nate prodded. 

“Shitty. But not the worst I’ve ever felt. It’s an infection?” Eliot wondered, remembering the antibiotics. 

“It was bronchitis first. The infection just added on to it. It’s where most of the fever came from. Dr. Valdez is estimating another three weeks before the lung inflammation dies down, but the antibiotics have been working so far.”

“Dr. Valdez?”

“Our client from this last job. You said no hospitals so we called her. She very kindly agreed to pay a house call. Or… okay, it was several house calls. But you seem to be tracking the conversation right now, so that’s good. And your temperature last we checked was 101.5. Not great but definitely much better than it’s been.”

Eliot thought hard. If he focused, he could vaguely remember a stranger pressing something cold into his chest and back, and Parker holding his hand and stopping him from punching her. He thought that was a dream though, especially considering it was preceded by him being faced with a lineup of his dead friends and was followed by him staring up at the sky on a beach. 

“You still need sleep,” Nate continued. 

“So do you,” Eliot replied. 

“I’ve been sleeping. Not that you’d know. Don’t worry about me, Eliot. Go back to sleep.”

It occurred to Eliot that Nate probably wasn’t doing very well with this whole “sitting at a friend’s sickbed thing,” and he wanted to say something, but then Parker was sitting up and poking at his definitely-not-healed ribs.

“Are you awake, normal Eliot, or dreaming, delirious Eliot?”

He smothered his grin and slapped her hand away irritably. “I’m going-back-to-sleep Eliot. Stop poking me, Parker.”

Parker beamed and aimed her finger at his cheek just once before she settled back down against his side. “Good news. He’s normal Eliot again.” 

Nate smirked indulgently. “Yes he is, Parker. Yes he is.”

____________________________________________

Despite Parker’s proclamation, he was most certainly  _ not  _ normal Eliot again. 

He couldn’t breathe right, and the coughing would not stop. On all accounts, he’d been asleep for more than forty-eight hours, but he was still so damn tired, and he found himself falling asleep ridiculously often. The fever also stuck stubbornly around, never going back above 102, but not dipping below 101 either. Hardison kept saying he had to be patient, but it had also been like twelve hours since his 3 am conversation with Nate, and god  _ dammit _ it was taking far too long. 

His team wasn’t making things all the more better. He was very much used to Nate staring creepily at all of them, but he’d wake up to find Nate just  _ looking _ at him, like it wasn’t even Eliot he was looking at, and at some point, he was ready to rip his eyes out of their sockets and lock them in the bathroom. Now that Eliot wasn’t actively dying anymore, Sophie was focusing all of her nervous energy on Nate, and it was driving everyone up the wall. Parker wasn’t acting much different than normal while Eliot was awake and interacting with her, but when he opened his eyes after nap--  _ resting his eyes-- _ he’d find her watching him, like she was scared he was gonna die if she stopped looking.

Thank whatever god there was for Hardison. He was the only one treating him like normal. The teasing was familiar territory, and if Eliot wasn’t giving quite as good as he got like he normally did, well, no one was saying anything. 

Dr. Valdez came by when she got off of work, and announced that now that Eliot was lucid, they could take out the IV. Eliot didn’t want to say that he was pleased, but he couldn’t quite deny the relief that blew through him once the needle was out of his arm. 

Hardison laughed and sang under his breath. “ _ I got no strings to hold me down…” _

“Seriously? Man, seriously? Shut up with that Disney crap.”

“Excuse me? I will have you know, Pinocchio was a gift of a movie. A goddamned  _ gift _ . How dare you. That’s sacrilege. Sacrilege, man, how  _ dare  _ you.”

“There’s a guy that turns into a donkey and it’s  _ never addressed again. _ ”

“Aha, so you’ve watched it.”

“I was a kid once, Hardison, I did watch kids’ movies.”

“Were you? Were you a child once? Are you sure you didn’t come out of the womb with long, luscious locks and a grumpy pout, growling all scary and sexy the way you do?”

Did… did he just say-- no. 

_ Sexy--  _ No. No he didn’t. What the fuck. What the fuck?

He raised an eyebrow to distract from the complete short out happening in his brain. He growled a little, just to tease. “Sexy?”

“No, man. No. You do not get to make fun of me-- you know what you do! You know exactly what you’re doing when you growl like that.  _ Exactly  _ what you’re doing.”

“Is it not supposed to be a sexy growl?” Parker asked. She was playing absentmindedly with the fingers on the hand that Valdez wasn’t bandaging, and watching Valdez’s movements unerringly. He wanted to play annoyed, but then she might stop, and most of his attention was being directed at playing mean with Hardison and trying not to completely lose his mind at “sexy” continuously playing on a loop in his head.

“Not supposed to-- it’s a menacing growl, Parker! A terrifying, menacing growl. Men with kill lists miles long have wet their pants at that growl!”

“Maybe so,” Hardison snickered, “but probably not in the way you thought.”

“Hardison,” Eliot warned. It fell a bit flat though, when his timbre resonated just a bit too wrong in his chest and left him gasping for air between hacking coughs. Parker refused to let go of his hand, and Valdez wasn’t finished wrapping the bleeding hole left by the needle, so he didn’t have a hand free to catch the bloody spittle that flew out of his mouth. Hardison, however, was on top of it, holding a ball of tissues to his mouth and wiping away the residue when he was finished.

If Eliot wasn’t Eliot, he might have turned bright red. Seeing as he  _ was _ Eliot, however, the only heat in his face was the flush from his fever. 

Hardison didn’t say anything about it; he just left to throw the tissues out and wash his hands. Parker started petting through his hair with her free hand while Dr. Valdez finished bandaging. 

Valdez pulled out a tongue depressor and a penlight and approached him calmly. “Say ‘Ah.’”

Eliot glared, but Valdez refused to budge. 

“I know it seems really childish, but it helps to open up the throat, and I want to take a look in there.”

He kept his mouth closed another moment, but then Parker stopped playing with his hair to aim a poke at his side, and he rolled his eyes and opened up, vocalizing just a bit.

“Alright,” announced Valdez when she was finished. “Good news; the bleeding should clear up on its own soon enough. It’s just the cough wreaking havoc on the throat and lung tissue. The fever also looks to be on a general downwards trend, and should be more or less cleared up in a couple of days.”

“And the bad news?” piped up Nate from where he sat in the corner, watching carefully while Dr. Valdez finished up.

“The bad news is, you’re looking at at least a couple more weeks on the coughing.”

“Weeks?” Eliot sputtered, and Valdez smiled apologetically. 

“Bronchitis takes awhile to go away, even the acute kind. You’re going to have to take it easy until you can manage to get through at least a few hours without coughing. I’m talking constant bed rest, except for bathroom breaks, and maybe about fifteen minutes of walking a day, and that’s after the fever clears up. And then I want you to be able to get through at least 24 hours without a coughing fit before you resume mostly normal activity. And I mean no coughing. I don’t mean ‘you had the urge to cough but you suppressed it.’ I mean no urges, no coughing, and definitely no blood.”

It sounded like a lot for him to deal with, but the ribs would probably take at least that long to heal anyway, and he didn’t want to come back to work too soon and risk someone getting hurt because he wasn’t ready and started coughing in the middle of a job.

He nodded, resigned, and he could  _ feel  _ a ripple of relief go through the room at the idea of not needing to force him to stay in bed. 

“When can I start trying to heal up from my own bed?” Eliot asked. 

“I’d wait at least until the fever goes away before you start trying to drive home. Portland’s what, a 5, 6 hour drive from Spokane?”

“Six hours, give or take,” Sophie confirmed, and Valdez nodded. 

“If you were planning on flying, I’d say no way until the coughing mostly stops. But driving, yeah, definitely wait until the fever’s gone.”

Eliot nodded. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.”

“What? No. No plan!” Hardison protested. “Shouldn’t we give it a little longer--”

“I want out of here, Hardison. I want my own couch and my own bed and food that isn’t takeout. I want to not be locked in a hotel room with no space for myself.”

“And I want you to actually get better and not relapse because you decided getting in a car for six hours was more important than resting!”

“Okay!” Sophie yelled, jumping up from her seat beside Nate and moving quickly to Dr. Valdez. “Dr. Valdez, thank you so much for your help.” She started ushering the woman out the door. 

Valdez squinted like she knew exactly what was going on, and carefully extricated herself from Sophie’s grasp. “Okay, fine! I’m going. Call me if the fever goes back above 102. It shouldn’t, but if it does…”

“We will,” Nate told her, also standing. “Have a good evening, Dr. Valdez.”

The doctor left, and Sophie turned an exasperated expression on Hardison and Eliot. “Nate and I are going to go. You two, work this out.”

“Work what out?” Hardison objected. “Of all the arguments we’ve had, this is--”

“Bye!” she interjected, pulling an unresisting Nate out the door. 

Parker didn’t try to move, still playing with Eliot’s hair and gripping his hand tightly. Neither Hardison nor Eliot felt like trying to make her move. It felt normal and natural for her to be there and be part of it, and they could do with a referee in the event of a bigger brawl breaking out. 

“So what’s with you, man?” Eliot asked, Hardison didn’t look at him, just paced around the room. 

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like for us these past few days?” Hardison announced. “It was terrifying, man! I thought you were dying at one point! Dr. Valdez started giving you the antibiotics and your fever didn’t start going down for a couple of hours and I spent the entire time convinced that it was because she couldn’t fix this and you were gonna die!”

“I’m not dying! Dammit Hardison, I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not. You’re not fine, not yet, and I’m sorry that I can’t deal with the thought of losing you because you insisted on being an idiot!”

“I’m not being an idiot! I got cleared to take a car ride home when the fever clears up! I’m not going against doctor’s advice, I’m not--”

“I’m scared, Eliot!”

“And I told you, you don’t have to be--”

“Yes we do,” Parker proclaimed, and the surprise at hearing her get involved in the argument shut both of them up. Their eyes shot over to her, but she was looking solely at Eliot. “We have to be scared,” she continued.

“That… Parker, that makes no damn sense!”

‘It-- okay, so we don’t have to be scared, but we are and you can’t change that no matter how much you yell at us.”

“Why… I’m fine! I’m not gonna-- there’s no reason to be scared!”

“Of course there’s a reason. The reason is that we love you and we want you to be okay.”

All of his protestations and arguments left his head as his brain short-circuited. 

_ We love you. _

What the hell?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH, look. Eliot and Hardison are fighting. I could have sworn I didn't intend for that to happen, but then suddenly they were yelling at each other and I was like.. ummm what okay I guess that's where this is going, good to know.
> 
> Let's not talk about the solid five minutes I spent researching how far away Portland is from various places where a pharmaceutical company could possibly be located. My first instinct was San Diego and then I found out that it takes over 16 hours to get from San Diego to Portland. It's... I did a LOT of research. California is a very big state. It scares me. 
> 
> I've remembered that the reason I don't write sick fics all that often is because they're hard to finish, but lol too late now i'm in too deep. 
> 
> I'm sorry for the cliffhanger. I mean, I'm not or I wouldn't have done it, but I hope to have another chapter up soon so it should be okay, I think? I hope?
> 
> I crave love and validation so please please leave me a comment!!


	12. You’re My Headstart, You’re My Rugged Heart (You’re the Pulse That I’ve Always Needed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang heads home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO! I've decided to write an epilogue and then I'm done, so, good news, I might potentially fulfill my promise of finishing before TUA S2 comes out!
> 
> Chapter title is from "Gone Gone Gone" by Phillip Phillips. (There's an incredible fan video to that song on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSP1ZGVQQMA Watch it if you want to smile or cry or both.)

“Can you stop staring at me?” Parker asked irritably. 

“But-- You just--”

“I think you broke him, babe,” Hardison smirked, and Eliot aimed a glare at him.

“I’m not broken, Hardison. I’m just…”

“You’re a little broken,” Parker surmised. “That’s okay. You’ve been sick, so it’s understandable.”

“Darling, it ain’t the being sick that’s got me… y’know…”

“Broken?” Hardison filled in. 

“Dammit--”

“Right, right, ‘I’m not broken, Hardison, shut up!’”

“Well, I’m not!” 

And he  _ wasn’t _ . He was a little speechless, sure, but a guy hears the people he definitely HASN’T been in love with for four years now say the words “We love you,” and Eliot was sure you could forgive the mental block. 

_ We love you _ .

He couldn’t tell if that was the best or most terrifying thing he ever heard. 

_ They mean it platonically _ , whispered a particularly mean voice in the back of his head, and he didn’t know if he should be relieved by that or disappointed. 

He didn’t know a lot of things anymore. 

“It’s okay if you are, a little bit,” Parker told him. “I know it’s hard to think about people loving you, and you might not be ready right now and that’s okay, but you should still know that we love you and that we’re here when you  _ are  _ ready.”

Hardison was nodding along with the statement, and Eliot looked back and forth between the two of them until his headache decided to remind him of its existence. 

“We talked about it while you were…” Haridson made a vague waving motion with his hand that Eliot took to mean ‘while you were out of your mind with fever.’ “We’re both fully on board. So, ball’s in your court, my man.”

“On board?” It didn’t  _ sound  _ like something platonic, but he was hardly allowing his hopes to go up very far.

“Yeah. With a… a relationship, I guess. A three-way, polyamorous relationship. Between us three. Fully equal, even, all of that.”

“You’re our Eliot,” Parker added. “Even if you don’t want to be  _ our Eliot _ , you’re still ours. Just without being  _ ours. _ ”

And maybe this was all in his head, or maybe it was just a testament to his understanding of Parker, but that made perfect sense to him. 

“I’m not-- I don’t--”

“Don’t worry about it, Eliot,” Hardison told him. “There’s no.. there’s no pressure here or--”

“Would you let me finish?”

Hardison’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click. 

“Thank you. I just meant... “ Despite his objections to Hardison’s interruptions, he fell silent. Switching his mindset from “Do NOT acknowledge feelings or else,” to “you better say something or miss out on the best thing that might ever happen to you,” wasn’t a switch he made easily. 

“Do you love us?” Parker asked, sounding like she thought she already knew the answer, but was no longer quite so sure. 

It wasn’t an answer he thought he’d be able to provide easily, but he was nodding before he could think about it at all. 

Parker grinned widely, and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek. “Good. So that’s settled.”

“Why don’t we finish this conversation when Eliot doesn’t look like he’s seconds away from falling asleep.”

Eliot wanted to protest, but he found it difficult to do so when yawn overtook him a moment later. 

Parker arranged herself along his side, and after Hardison returned from the bathroom with a glass of water to leave bedside and a damp washcloth that he lay over Eliot’s still over-hot forehead, he joined them on the bed, sandwiching Eliot between them. 

And he wasn’t comfortable in that position, but he found it inordinately difficult to do anything but go to sleep anyway. 

_______________________________________________________

It took another four days, but nevertheless, when Wednesday dawned and Eliot’s temperature had stayed below 100° all night, they all agreed to call the fever a thing of the past and by noon, Nate had them all packed up in the van and on the way home. 

Dr. Valdez had seen them off, reminding Eliot to take it easy and to take his antibiotics.

“I don’t want to get a call telling me I need to come out to Portland because you’ve relapsed after not taking care of yourself properly. We don’t give you the amount of pills that we do so that you’ll have extras taking up space in your medicine cabinet.”

Eliot promised her he’d be good, and when she stared at him another minute, Hardison backed up the promise with one of his own to make sure he did. Eliot resented the implication that he couldn’t be trusted, but he was being ushering into the van before he could argue his point. 

The first couple of hours of the trip passed quickly. Parker had been gracious enough to let him use her pillow again, provided he kept it in her lap, and after a week of being taken care of, he knew a physical connection refusal wouldn’t be taken seriously if the reason was, as it usually was, “I’m Eliot Spencer and I’m not just gonna  _ let  _ you touch me.” He was more tired than he cared to admit anyway, and taking a nap in the back of the van with Parker braiding his hair in her lap didn’t sound all too bad to him. 

He woke up in time for their first pit stop. He managed to make it into the rest stop bathroom and back under his own steam, but it was embarrassing how tired he was once he got back to the van. He’d wanted to stop and buy some water and maybe some crackers, but he was so focused on not coughing as he made his way through the rest stop that he just blew right by the little shop. 

Eliot didn’t want to go back to sleep over the next leg of the trip, so he sat next to Hardison instead. Perhaps he was a little closer than he’d normally let himself be, but that came in handy when he fell asleep against his shoulder fifteen minutes into the drive while he watched Hardison play Tetris. The falling blocks were strangely hypnotic, and when his eyes finally fell closed, he still saw the colors dropping in his head. 

He might have slept through their second rest stop if Hardison hadn’t gently tried to shift him over to Parker’s shoulder when they parked, desperate for a restroom. He’d registered the shift immediately and his eyes flew open. He wanted to be mad at being woken up, but he also didn’t want to be asleep and it wasn’t like Hardison had done it on purpose. He grumbled anyway. 

“Just go back to sleep,” Hardison insisted after apologizing, but when Parker saw that Eliot didn’t need her to be his pillow, she climbed out of the van to stretch her legs, and Eliot thought that sounded like a pretty good idea.

He stood against the side of the van next to Sophie, watching them walk away with Nate and carrying on a conversation about action movie romances in between coughs into a clump of tissues. When the others returned, Hardison pressed a liter sized water bottle and a lemon ice pop into his hands, and Parker was brandishing a souvenir teddy bear in a tiny hoodie that read “WASHINGTON,” and a DVD case that contained a copy of  _ The Expendables _ . 

Parker had definitely stolen her prizes, but Eliot didn’t say anything. Nate had been with her, and if he hadn’t said anything, Eliot sure wasn’t. 

He unwrapped the lemon ice pop and made sure Hardison was watching when he put it in his mouth. It was overly sweet and definitely artificially flavored, but the ice felt good on his throat, and Hardison had this pleased look on his face that made Eliot feel kind of warm inside. 

They watched the DVD over the last leg of the trip, and Eliot wasn’t sure how or when it had happened, but he’d wound up with Parker’s bear on his lap by the midway point of the movie.

The movie ended just minutes before they pulled up behind the brewpub. Hardison had started ushering him through the door and towards his and Parker’s loft above the Leverage office in the back before Eliot had even fully realized it. By the time he had, Nate and Sophie had already left for their place, and Eliot had a funny feeling Hardison would come up with a million excuses why neither he nor Parker could give him a ride home. If he wasn’t so tired, he would’ve driven himself. 

By the time they reached the back room, Eliot had resigned himself to spending the duration of his sickness with them. And if he was honest, he wasn’t all too disappointed. Except that he’d been around them non-stop since he first started feeling shitty over a week ago and he felt like a little bit of space would not be unappreciated. At least Nate and Sophie had taken off. 

He was man enough to admit that if he’d isolate the way he’d wanted to at first, the way he usually did, he probably would have died. That fever would have boiled his brain and no one would have known until it was too late. 

But he also hated for the people who trusted him to keep them safe to see him weak and vulnerable. He craved attention and affection and being taken care of, but it pained him and made him feel shitty, maybe because he knew he didn’t deserve it. And he wasn’t a complete invalid anymore! He knew how to take care of himself, and he was more than capable of it at that point. He didn’t need them to be doing it for him, and so why the hell were they? 

Eliot expected Hardison to bring him into the guest bedroom or set him up on the couch or something, but the room they entered screamed “master bedroom.” Even more, it screamed “Parker and Hardison’s bedroom.” It wasn’t just the bed that looked bigger than any bed had any need to be, or the television mounted to the wall with tiny figurines lining the top of it, or even the harness hanging from a hook on the ceiling. 

It was the way the sheets on the bed were messy and unmade, because Hardison defined part of living on his own as “not having to follow Nana’s rules anymore,” and Parker thought making a bed was pointless and unnecessary. It was the tangle of wires on one of the bedside tables and the way the other table was bare except for a lamp and a clock. It was the mess of snack food wrappers in the trash can and the pile of locks on the dresser. It was the bookshelf and the two framed pictures up on the walls that looked natural, but to Eliot’s eyes, it was obvious the way one of the pictures hid a safe and the way some of the books were definitely hollowed out and filled with what was probably money and the way the other painting definitely had a false back the same way Old Nate did. 

He tried to not read all that much into the way Hardison pushed him over to the bed, but it was hard to get his head out of their conversation from a few days before, and thinking about it all in conjunction, it was hard  _ not  _ to see it as an invitation.

Which… he wasn’t really opposed to, if he was honest. But it was also a bit early to be thinking about that stuff, and he was still sick, and he was also  _ not  _ ready to be--

Okay, why was he freaking out about it? It was  _ Hardison and Parker _ . They were the ones who told him that they’d be there when he was ready. They were the ones who put a pause on the relationship talk until he wasn’t sick anymore. Odds were, Hardison just wanted him to… be close? Be comfortable? Or maybe Hardison just didn’t think about it. It was Hardison after all, and Hardison was a genius, but he was a complete idiot. 

Eliot was on the bed before he could really finish having his freak out. It was soft and the sheets were cool and clean and smelled like fabric softener, and he took a minute to appreciate the fact that Hardison had a luxury streak a mile wide because the bed in the hotel was good, and his bed at his apartment was fine, but this bed was  _ heavenly _ . 

Hardison left the room once Eliot was settled and returned a minute later with Parker, both of them carting the suitcases that Eliot had completely forgotten he’d left in the van. He jerked, like he was going to get up and help, but god, how useless would that have been, now that they were already putting them down, and also, Parker hissed at his aborted motion and zoomed over to poke him until he relaxed back into the bed. 

“Okay!” Hardison announced once Parker had jumped onto the bed next to him and stretched back with a grin, looking shocking like a cat. “So, Valdez told you to take it easy, bed rest, and so we will be your chefs, your go-fers, your…. Everything. We will do whatever you need. A-ny-thing!” 

“I-- That’s really not necessary. I don’t… I don’t need anything, Hardison. Actually, wait. What I need is to go back to my apartment.”

“You can stay here, man, you don’t--”

“I know I can, but maybe.. I just thought space might be a good idea.”

Parker squinted. “Do you think space is a good idea or do you think that you being sick is the same thing as you being weak and you’re embarrassed to feel weak in front of us?”

He looked at her with wide eyes, and she must have thought he was surprised, because she shrugged. “Sophie said I’ve gotten a lot better at reading people. Also you’re just really easy to read.”

And, okay, that kind of hurt. “I am-- Parker, I am not easy to read! I am an expert at tricking people! The only person on this crew better at grifting is Sophie, and she’s Sophie!”

“Hey!” Hardison protested.

“You go too far, man. You know you go too far. And that’s not-- I am not easy to read!”

“You are a bit,” Hardison pointed out. “To be fair to you, it wasn’t for the first couple of years. But you’ve gotten easier recently. Like, you’ve relaxed or something? I don’t know, but I think Parker’s right. I think you’re getting nervous over being sick in front of us like this past week isn’t a thing that happened, and now you want to run away like you tend to do when you get scared, and I want to promise you that none of that matters. We want to be here for you and help you, and once you’re better, we never have to talk about it again if you don’t want to.”

Eliot wanted to be thrown for a loop. He felt like he should be. He  _ wasn’t,  _ though, and he put in one more protest, because he thought he should. 

“I don’t  _ need _ \--”

“Okay,” Parker responded. “You don’t need it. You don’t need us to take care of you. But what do you want?”

Eliot knew the answer to that question. He knew he wanted to stay. But he wasn’t a person accustomed to asking for what he wanted, and the words got caught in his sore, aching throat. 

But, as it turned out, maybe it didn’t matter, because even though he didn’t say anything, they seemed to understand. Hardison sandwiched Eliot between him and Parker on the bed and turned on the television, and finally, Eliot let himself smile, just a little bit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so we agree that Eliot canNOT ask for what he wants, right? 
> 
> I can't tell if Parker is OOC or not, but I don't really care at this point. I think she's particularly in character. I could be wrong. Eh? 
> 
> Also, there's a part of this that is entirely inspired by my watching New Girl all day. Hardison and Eliot's "I'm the best grifter" "Hey!" "You go too far, man. You go too far." was v sitcom and I didn't realize it until I was halfway through writing it and then I didn't want to change it bc it's funny. 
> 
> The comments have been buoying me along! I'm so appreciative of them! Thank you so much for reading, and please please leave a comment down below!


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it! I did it! I finished before Umbrella Academy came out! Thank you all so much for sticking with me! Please enjoy!

Nate called them with another job proposal on the same day that Eliot woke up between Parker and Hardison to find the two of them grinning down at him from where they’d propped themselves up on their elbows. It was three weeks after they’d gotten home, three weeks of movie nights and Hardison taking advantage of his bed rest to make him sit through Doctor Who and Parker pulling him out of bed for exactly fifteen minutes at a time and Amy bringing in meals from the brewpub twice a day because both Hardison and Parker refused to let him near the kitchen. Three weeks of more physical affection than he’d ever felt before, than he’d ever let himself feel…

And it had been good. It had been so, so very good. 

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“How do you feel?” Hardison asked, a teasing lilt to his voice. 

He stopped and took stock. The heavy ache and burning in his throat and chest had been getting better with every passing day, but it had still been present. He’d been tired, with headaches and body aches, and even though he’d been getting better, it’d been slow going. 

But he felt…  _ good.  _ Fully rested for the first time in a while, with no pain to speak of anywhere. 

“I’m good,” he told them, stretching a bit and starting to sit up. 

“Good like when we asked you yesterday and you started coughing as soon as you said anything or good like actually good?” Parker interrogated, and Eliot rolled his eyes. 

“Good. Like no more pain. No more anything.”

Hardison’s grin widened. “I called it!” he crowed, collapsing onto his back and throwing up his hands in victory. “I knew it! You didn’t cough at  _ all _ last night, El!”

“How would you know? You were asleep, weren’t you?”

Hardison stilled, then chuckled nervously. “I was. Of course I was. What-- what else would I be doing?”

“Hardison didn’t want to tell you,” Parker said as she, too, fell back against the bed, “but he set up a mic connected to a program that recorded every time you coughed and traced the frequency.”

“Traitor!” Hardison declared, even as Eliot gave him an astonished look. 

“Why would you-- and why wouldn’t--”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hardison declared finally. 

It was then that Parker’s phone started ringing, and Eliot kind of wanted to ignore it in favor of pushing Hardison further, but Hardison jumped for it.

“Hey, Nate,” he greeted cheerfully. “Good news; Eliot’s doing great!”

________________________________________________

Sophie and Nate walked into the back room at noon that day. Nate wasn’t sure exactly what he expected to see when he walked in, but if he was honest, he’d kind of thought things would just go back to normal. Maybe there’d be a little bit more tension, maybe Eliot would be a little more prickly than normal, maybe there’d be more lingering glances and heart eyes than they were used to, but it would be mostly normal.

He wasn’t expecting…  _ this _ .

Eliot was next to Hardison, looking over his shoulder at the laptop, and they were sitting close together, and Hardison was routinely taking one hand off of the keyboard to grab Eliot’s hand and bring it up to his mouth. Parker was plastered against Eliot’s back, legs wrapped around his waist, and she was alternating between poking Eliot’s chest and soothing a hand over Hardison’s shoulder. And Eliot… he was very obviously trying to be grumpy about it, but no one was being fooled. He flushed every time Hardison kissed his knuckles, and he definitely did not try and knock Parker off of his back. 

Both Nate and Sophie watched for a minute. None of them seemed to even notice them walk in, which was weird, because Eliot and Parker usually always noticed. 

Finally, Hardison seemed to be finished with what he was working on, because he sat back and waved for Nate and Sophie to actually come into the room instead of hovering by the door. Eliot tapped at Parker’s leg, but she refused to budge, so he just shifted around in the chair and let her stay attached to him. He glared at Sophie and Nate as if daring them to say something. 

Okay, so maybe they had noticed. They just didn’t care.

“So, is this happening now?” Nate asked.

“Is what happening?” Eliot challenged.

Sophie placed a hand on Nate’s shoulder, and Nate took that as his cue to leave things as they were. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Eliot looked unsure, but nodded anyway. Parker just grinned at Nate and then detached herself from Eliot’s back, monkey climbing around him and settling on the table instead. 

“Okay, Hardison. Run it.”

________________________________________________________

_ Two Hours Earlier _

“Wait,” Hardison ordered, and Eliot and Parker both turned to look at him. He was sitting hunched over his laptop, but he’d sat up straight, fire glinting in his eyes. 

The fire made Eliot nervous, but it didn’t stop him from prompting him with a muttered “What?”

“We… we said we’d finish the conversation when you were feeling better. Which you are. And I don’t-- I don’t want to put pressure on you or rush you in any way, but I was… Well, I was wondering if you’d given any more thought to… To this. Us. Being… Being an us?”

And how the fuck was he supposed to say that yes, he had, in fact, given more thought to it. He’d given a lot more thought to it. It was kind of the biggest thing that had been on his mind for weeks.

Parker, however, just looked confused. “I thought we’d agreed. Eliot loves us, and he said it, so he’s with us and that’s it?”

“Well, we never said…” Hardison had started, but Eliot gripped Parker’s words with an iron fist.

“Do we need to?” Eliot asked, sort of desperate to avoid the conversation. 

“Yes. We do. I don’t want you to run because this isn’t what you really want, or to do something you don’t like and have you--”

“I won’t. I won’t ever-- Hardison, I swear. You have me, however you want me, forever.”

“This isn’t about what I want. This is about what you want.”

And  _ god _ why couldn’t he put that any other way? Why did it have to--

“Do you want us, Eliot?” Parker inserted, seeming intent to clear any misunderstandings. 

“I want what you want. I want you to be happy.”

“We are happy, man.” Hardison told him. “We’re happy with whatever you want to give us. You just gotta say it.” 

He was quiet a while as he tried to force the words out of his throat. Eventually, all that popped out was, “I can’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Parker decided. “You’ve basically said it.”

“We need clear terms here, Parker!” Hardison objected, but she shook her head.

“There are clear terms. He wants us happy because he loves us, and because making us happy makes him happy. If this wasn’t what he wanted, he wouldn’t want what we wanted.”

Hardison looked confused, but Eliot kind of wanted to cry because  _ finally, someone got it. _

Instead of crying, he pulled Parker close and planted his lips on hers. She met his intensity with plenty of her own, and he refused to pull away until she did. “Yay for kissing,” she beamed, and then gave him a tiny shove over to Hardison. 

Eliot hovered over him, planting his hands on his shoulders and spinning him in the chair until Eliot was face to face with him. 

“Are we good?” he asked. “Do you understand?”

“I swear, Eliot, if you’re not about to kiss me, I’m gonna--” his words were cut off when Eliot’s mouth ended up on his. Again, he waited until Hardison pulled away for the kiss to break. 

“I ain’t good with words,” Eliot grumbled. “I can’t-- I can’t always say what I want. But… But it’s this. It’s you and me and her, and us together, and anything that it comes with. So, Alec,” Eliot heard the other man gulp at the sound of his first name. “Are we good? Are those terms clear?”

“Crystal,” Hardison whispered.

And then Parker was plastering herself to Eliot’s back and Hardison was pulling him into the chair next to him and cuddling close to his arm for an instant before going back to his computer. And that’s how they stayed.

He could tell when Nate and Sophie walked in, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He let Parker stay where she was. He let Hardison keep grabbing his hand and kissing his knuckles. He dared them to say something, anything, because in the end it wouldn’t matter. 

Even if he couldn’t say it, this? This right here? This was all he wanted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading, for the comments and the kudos and the encouragement. Thank you to a very special someone (you know who you are) for being the reason I wanted to finish this story even when it seemed like no one gave a shit. Thanks for tuning in, all of you, and I'll see you in the next one!

**Author's Note:**

> Do I fully know where this story is going? No. Will I try to update by next week? Yes. Will I actually? Who the fuck knows. 
> 
> I know I'm tagging it OT3 but I don't know that they'll actually get together over the course of the story. We'll see where the plot takes us.  
> The pining is real though. It's... There's so much. Maybe too much. It's fine. It's FINE. 
> 
> So should I even pursue this? Is it worth the effort to write this? Is anyone interested? Am I writing to an empty void? Let me know! Leave a comment! All suggestions and comments and questions are welcome! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


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